What are ghost particles? These mysterious space fragments could be the key to understanding our universe

After years of research, astronomers have made a huge scientific discovery that could change their way of studying the galaxy. The researchers confirmed the achievement, on Thursday, July 12, in the journal Science claiming that astronomers detected a ghost particle that solved a century-old mystery. What is a "ghost particle" exactly? This may seem something sinister and from another world, but (unfortunately) this is not a confirmation that ghosts exist. Instead, it's a revelation about the galaxy.

Ghost particles are also known as "neutrinos". According to Space.com, "Neutrinos are almost mbadless subatomic particles that have no electrical charge and therefore rarely interact with their environment, indeed, billions of these" ghost particles "go unnoticed through your body each second. Although they are everywhere, they are incredibly difficult to detect, and scientists have struggled to do so for a very long time.

Why are ghost particles important? While most neutrinos come from the sun, a small percentage has extremely high energies and has been propelled into our planet from a very, very deep space, from a huge black hole. Because neutrinos are almost impossible to detect, astronomers have not managed to find one to go back to the origin – until now.

It was discovered by the Neutral Ice Ice Observatory at the South Pole, using over five thousand detectors buried more than a mile under ice. These sensors detected a single ghostly neutrino interacting with an atom, then scientists could trace the particle from where it came from, an entirely different galaxy – a "distant blazar, a huge elliptical galaxy with a

This is the first time scientists have discovered something like this, and the discovery allows them to learn a lot more about the universe and the light. The Washington Post explains how important this discovery is, saying, "It's the most breathtaking and extreme physics: the researchers compared the breakthrough to the 2017 detection of space waves caused by collisions stars, which has added gravitational waves to the toolbox of scientists to observe the cosmos. "

Neutrinos are important because they transmit information across time and space. They travel through the universe and can not be hurt or lost, and scientists call them "messengers". Heidi Schellman, particle physicist at Oregon State University and computer coordinator for another neutrino detection project, Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment, who was not involved in the research, told Washington Post : "They are very clean, they have simple interactions, which means that every single neutrino interaction tells you something.

In other words, the ghost particles will reveal important and otherwise unknown information about the galaxy to those who study them.The only thing is, you must be able to detect them in order to find this information. that scientists have done it once, I hope that they will be able to do it again. "Schellman says that coupling neutrino detections with light observations could answer unanswered long questions about things as "distant cataclysms, test theories about the composition of the universe, and refine their understanding of the fundamental rules of physics."

Not only were astronomers able to trace the neutrino from where it came from , but they also responded to an unresolved mystery: the source of cosmic rays.As Space.com says, "cosmic neutrinos go hand in hand with cosmic rays, charged particles s highly energetic that continually slam on our planet. Neutrino detection has allowed scientists to realize that blazars are "accelerators of at least some of the fastest cosmic ryas". This is something that astronomers have been questioning since 1912.

Considering the fact that the detection of a neutrino can answer a mystery like that, we can only imagine what the detection of 39, a greater number could reveal on the universe. It's a pretty wild thought. As an astroparticle physicist and spokesperson for IceCube, Darren Grant said, "It's a whole new vision of what's going on in the universe." It's very exciting indeed.