A space neutrino recently immersed himself in the Mediterranean Sea with an energy that blows all other neutrinos known outside the water.
Packing a blow of about 220 million electronic volts, this particle was Around 20 times as energetic Like the highest cosmic neutrinos higher views before, researchers report on February 13 Nature. The particle was glimpsed by the partially built cubic kilometer neutrinos telescope, or KM3net.
“They hit the fat prize,” says Francis Halzen, a physicist at the University of Wisconsin -Madison and principal researcher at the ICECUBE Neutrin Observatory in Antarctica. “We have been taking data with a much larger detector for 10 years. We have never seen such an event. “
Physicists are interested in cataloging cosmic neutrinos because these light and electrically neutral particles can cross vast sections of almost intact space. The most energetic could offer unmatched ideas about the powerful phenomena that spit them, such as supermassive black holes. But the reduction of particles that barely interact with matter requires giant telescopes made of ice -locked sensors, such as Icecube, or submerged in water, such as KM3net.
The two KM3net neutrin detectors, one on the coast of Sicily, the other near southern France, are still under construction but are already collecting data. Both contain cables hundreds of meters high, which are hanging with light sensor packages anchored in the seabed.
When cosmic neutrinos interact with matter in or near a KM3net detector, they generate charged particles as muons. As those muons turn through water, they give weak flashes of bluish light that km3net sensors can collect. Marking when different sensors detect this light can reveal the path of a particle; The blue tone brightness reflects the energy of the particle.
On February 13, 2023, the detector near Sicily was executed by an extremely energetic muon that was almost parallel to the horizon. At that time, only 21 of the 230 planned sensor cables were in place. Based on the energy and trajectory of the muón, KM3net scientists determined that it must have been generated by a space neutrino instead of an atmosphere particle.
The simulations suggest that neutrino’s energy was around 220 volts of Petaelectron. The head of the previous registry had about 10 volts of Petaelectron.
“It is a kind of shocking situation,” says Luigi Antonio Fusco, a member of the KM3net team, Antonio Fusco, a physicist at the University of Salerno in Escol, Italy. It is as if neutrinos physicists had only seen fires fed by a few ignition sticks, “and then someone comes with a flamethrower.” KM3net researchers estimate that they hope to see a neutrino of this caliber once every 70 years or so.
“I was definitely skeptical,” says Erik Blaufuss, a physicist at Maryland University in College Park who wrote a Comment on the study In the same number of Nature. “But they make a rather convincing case in the newspaper that it is real.”
To track the origins of the neutrino, the KM3net team toured Ray Gamma, X -rays and Radio Telescopes. Twelve objects stood out in the sky region where neutrino came from. “Most of them are active galactic nuclei,” says Fusco, bright galaxies where supermassive black holes are gas and dust. “The problem is that there are so many,” he says. “You really can’t identify only one.”
Another possibility is that this is the first observed cosmogenic neutrino, created when the cosmic rays of ultra -high energy are mixed with photons from the cosmic microwave background, the glow of the Big Bang.
“At this point, it is very difficult to reach conclusions about the origins,” says Kohta Murase, a theoretical physicist of Penn State who is not involved in the investigation. “It is dangerous to trust an event.”
KM3net’s expansion should improve its ability to catch neutrinos and identify its origins. They are also working on other neutrinos telescopes, such as a planned ICECube expansion, an observatory proposed on the island of Vancouver in Canada and one under construction at the South China Sea. These tools, says Murase, can help researchers home in the birthplace of neutrinos with amazingly high energies.
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