Astronomers Detect Rare Neutrinos Dubbed Ghost Particles Spewing From Milky Way Galaxy

Astronomers have detected high-energy neutrons from within the Milky Way galaxy. According to a report, it can open up a new research window.

Rarely Seen Neutrinos Spotted

Since neutrinos seldom collide with atoms, they are incredibly challenging to detect. Neutrinos are known as "ghost particles" because only about half of them would be stopped by a lead object the size of a light-year.

When extremely high-energy particles strike atoms or when radioactive decay occurs, such as in nuclear reactors, neutrinos are produced. The most energetic varieties are millions to billions of times more energetic than the energies generated by the fusion reactions that fuel stars.

There is evidence that high-energy neutrinos come from galaxies outside the Milky Way. However, scientists have long hypothesized that our galaxy is also a source, Space.com reported.

For instance, atomic nuclei traveling at almost the speed of light, known as cosmic rays, produce gamma rays and high-energy neutrinos when they collide with dust and gas. Since gamma rays from the Milky Way's plane have previously been discovered, scientists have anticipated that high-energy neutrinos will also come from this region.

Although there have been some indications of this emission, confirmation has eluded scientists. Using the IceCube Neutrino Observatory at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, the latest study took a second look. The first gigaton neutrino detector ever constructed, IceCube is encased in a gigaton (1 billion tons) of ice.

More than 5,000 light sensors are housed within the 0.24 cubic miles (1 cubic kilometer) of Antarctic ice that makes up IceCube. These instruments watch for distinctive light bursts when neutrinos occasionally collide with atoms.

The research team concentrated on the Milky Way plane, a region of the galaxy that is dense and located near the Milky Way's equator. They examined 60,000 neutrinos from 10 years of IceCube data, 30 times more than previously examined in previous neutrino surveys of the galactic plane.

This was even more challenging than it may sound, as attempts to isolate neutrinos from a greater distance are obscured by the background of neutrinos created by cosmic ray collisions with molecules in Earth's atmosphere.

To overcome this difficulty, the researchers used artificial intelligence technology to examine the IceCube data. This made it easier to distinguish atmospheric neutrinos from other particles that the observatory can detect due to their generation.

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High-Energy Neutrinos Open New Window to Study

This research located high-energy neutrinos that most likely originated from the galactic plane of the Milky Way. According to study co-author and astroparticle physicist Mirco Hüennefeld of the TU Dortmund University in Germany, this high-energy neutrino finding offers a completely new window to examine the characteristics of our host galaxy.

It excites me to see how quickly the relatively new area of neutrino astronomy is progressing. A neutrino telescope like IceCube took years to conceptualize, and only in the past few years have there been a number of intriguing findings, including the first indication of extragalactic sources. With these findings, neutrino astronomy has now reached a new turning point.

These results are intriguing because they show that, unlike photons, the extragalactic neutrino flow outshines the galactic neutrino emission.

We may soon get a clearer picture of the Milky Way in neutrinos thanks to IceCube detector modifications that will increase its sensitivity over the coming years, according to Hüennefeld. He added that the answers to these issues will affect their understanding of cosmic rays and their origin, as well as the general features of our host galaxy.