2023-06-30 12:31:05
A team of scientists from the IceCube laboratory has succeeded in tracking down the origin of thousands of ghost particles, called neutrinos, coming from our galaxy, the Milky Way. This new galactic image, constructed from matter and not light, opens up a new way of studying the Universe.
Neutrinos passing through the Earth.
This one-of-a-kind image was captured while tracking neutrinos passing through the IceCube Observatory. These particles have the particularity of passing through matter at a speed close to that of light, thanks to their non-existent electrical charge and their almost zero mass.
However, by slowing down these neutrinos, physicists have been able to trace the origin of particles, cataclysmic stellar explosions and cosmic ray collisions dating back billions of light years. These findings were published in the journal Science on June 29.
“The sensitivity of the IceCube detector, combined with new data analysis tools, has given us a new view of our galaxy,” said Denise Caldwell, director of the physics division (Physics (from the Greek φυσις, the nature ) is etymologically the…) of the National Science Foundation which funded the research (Scientific research designates in the first place all the actions undertaken with a view to…).
An artist’s composition of the Milky Way seen through a neutrino lens (blue).
Crédit: IceCube Collaboration/US National Science Foundation (Lily Le & Shawn Johnson)/ESO (S. Brunier).
Every second, regarding 100 billion neutrinos pass through every square inch of your body. These particles are everywhere – produced by stars, supernova explosions, cosmic rays and radioactive decay, as well as in accelerators of particles and nuclear reactors on Earth. Despite their abundance, these particles are incredibly difficult to detect.
To capture them, physicists turned to IceCube, located at the Amundsen-Scott Station at the South Pole in Antarctica (Antarctica (pronounced [ɑ̃.taʁk.tik] Listen) is the continent most…). The giant detector is made up of more than 5000 optical sensors (A sensor is a device which transforms the state of an observed physical quantity into a…) distributed over 86 strings which descend into holes drilled up to 2.5 kilometers (The meter (symbol m, from the Greek metron, measure) is the basic unit of length of the System…) of depth in the ice.
The IceCube Neutrino Observatory under an Aurora Australis in Antarctica.
Credit: IceCube/NSF.
Occasionally, neutrinos interact with water molecules, creating particle byproducts called muons. These muons can be observed as flashes of light in the detector’s sensors. By analyzing these flashes, scientists can reconstruct the energy and sometimes the sources of the neutrinos.
By feeding a machine learning algorithm with more than 60,000 neutrino cascades detected over 10 years, physicists have built an impressive picture of our galaxy.
“The observation of our galaxy in a form other than light is a first in human history,” said University physicist Naoko Kurahashi Neilson. la…) Drexel in Philadelphia (Philadelphia (in English Philadelphia) is a city in the state of Pennsylvania, United States….).
Like previous revolutionary advances such as radio astronomy, infrared astronomy (Infrared (IR) radiation is electromagnetic radiation of one wavelength…) and gravitational wave detection, mapping (The cartography designates the creation and study of geographical maps. The…) of neutrinos gives us a whole new way of exploring the Universe.
View of one of IceCube’s 86 detector strings, dangling in holes drilled up to 2.5 kilometers into the ice.
Credit: NSF/B. Gudbjartsson.
1688280243
#Researchers #reveal #image #ghost #particles #galaxy
