Astronomers have discovered high-energy neutrinos coming from the interior of our Milky Way galaxy, which could open an exciting new window of research, a new report reports.
Neutrinos they are very difficult to see, because they do not collide with atoms. A light-year-sized conductor would stop about half of the neutrinos flying through it (which explains why neutrinos are called “ghost particles”).
Neutrinos are produced from radioactive decay, such as nuclear reactors, or large particles that collide with atoms. Hotter forms have millions to billions of times more energy than those produced by this fusion. stars.
Related: ‘Neutrino factories’ may hold the answer to the cosmic ray mystery
The most energetic neutrinos are known to come from galaxies beyond Milky Way. But researchers have suspected for a long time that our galaxy also originated. For example, when cosmic light – an atomic nucleus traveling at nearly the speed of light – hits dust and gas, emitting gamma rays and high-energy neutrinos. Previous research has detected gamma rays from the Milky Way galaxy, so scientists expect more energetic neutrinos from there.
There have been reports of such a leak, but confirmation has so far been impossible. A new study also looked at, using IceCube Neutrino Observatory at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. IceCube is placed inside a gigaton (1 billion tons) of ice, making it the first gigaton neutrino detector ever built.
IceCube orbits 0.24 cubic miles (1 cubic kilometer) of Antarctic ice with more than 5,000 light sensors. These instruments look for the special light that comes from events where neutrinos break apart atoms.
The research team focused on the Milky Way galaxy, a dense region of galaxy it is located along the equator of the Milky Way. They studied 10 years of IceCube data, analyzing 60,000 neutrinos – 30 times more than space-based neutrino scans have seen.
This was more difficult than it sounds, because the background of neutrinos produced by cosmic rays collide with molecules in the The breath of the earth clouds effort to pick out neutrinos from far away.
To solve this problem, the researchers used artificial intelligence IceCube data analysis technology. This helped eliminate atmospheric neutrinos, the production of which allows for detection of small particles.
The mission detected high-energy neutrinos that may have originated in the Milky Way galaxy.
“The observation of high-energy neutrinos opens a new window to study the structure of our galaxy,” co-author Mirco Hüennefeld, an astrophysicist at TU Dortmund University in Germany, told Space.com.
“I think it’s exciting to see the small field of neutrino astronomy growing so quickly,” added Hüennefeld. “It took many years to think about a neutrino telescope like IceCube, and in the last few years, we have seen an accumulation of interesting things, including the first evidence of extragalactic sources. neutrino astronomy.”
Although the findings suggest that the newly discovered neutrinos come from our galaxy, IceCube is currently unable to identify their source. They could come from different sources, or many of them could come from other parts of the sky, Hüennefeld said.
“What is interesting about these findings is that, unlike photons, the galactic neutrino flux exceeds the extragalactic neutrino flux,” said Hüennefeld.
In the coming years, IceCube will get a detector upgrade “that will increase its sensitivity, allowing us to get a clearer picture of the Milky Way in neutrinos sooner,” Hüennefeld said. “Answering these questions will have implications for our understanding of light in the universe and its origin, and especially for the contents of our galaxy.”
Scientists explained in detail what they get online Thursday (June 29) in the journal Science.
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