Scientists have been able to trace the origins of a ghostly subatomic particle, a neutrino that travelled 3.9 billion light-years to Earth, for the first time. The tiny, high-energy cosmic particle was discovered by sensors deep in the Antarctic ice in the IceCube Detector.
Scientists and observatories around the world were able to trace the neutrino to a galaxy with a supermassive, rapidly spinning black hole at its center, known as a blazar. This galaxy sits to the left or Orion’s shoulder in the constellation, and is about 4 billion light-years from Earth.
Scientists say the discovery heralds a new era of space research, allowing the use of neutrinos to study and observe the universe in an unprecedented way. Scientists may also be able to track the origin of mysterious cosmic rays for the first time.
Doug Cowen, a founding member of the IceCube collaboration and Penn State professor of physics and astronomy and astrophysics, said in a statement: “For 20 years, one of our dreams as a collaboration was to identify the sources of high-energy cosmic neutrinos, and it looks like we’ve finally done it.”
What sorts of things do you think we might discover using neutrino science?
