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About four billion years ago, while the planet Earth was still in its infancy, the axis of a black hole of about a billion times more massive that the sun was pointing to where our planet would be on September 22nd. , 2017.
Along the axis, a jet of high-energy particles sent photons and neutrinos in our direction at or near the speed of light. The IceCube neutrino observatory at the South Pole detected one of these subatomic particles – the IceCube-170922A neutrino – and ascended it up to a small parcel of sky in the Orion constellation and identified the cosmic source: a flared black hole the size of a billion suns, 3.7 billion light years from Earth, known as the TXS Blazar 0506 + 056. blazars have been known for some time. What was not clear was that they could produce high energy neutrinos. More exciting still, such neutrinos have never been found at their source.
![7_13_Blazar 19659004] An artist impression of a blazar. </span> <span class=](https://s.newsweek.com/sites/www.newsweek.com/files/styles/embed-lg/public/2018/07/13/713blazar.jpg)
GSFC / JPL-Caltech / NASA Finding the Cosmic Source of High-Energy Neutrinos for the First Time, Announced on July 12, 2018 by the National Science Foundation, marks the dawn of a new era of neutrino astronomy. Since 1976, when pioneering physicists have been trying to build a large-scale, high-energy neutrino detector off the Hawaiian coast, the discovery of IceCube marks the triumphant conclusion of a long and difficult campaign led by several hundreds of scientists and engineers. The simultaneous detection of two separate astronomical messengers – neutrinos and light – is a powerful demonstration of how so-called multimessenger astronomy can provide the leverage we need to identify and understand some of the aspects of astronomy. the most energetic phenomena of the universe. Since its discovery as a source of neutrinos less than a year ago, the TXS 0506 + 056 blazar has been the subject of close scrutiny. The neutrino flux associated with it continues to provide in-depth information on the physical processes at work near the black hole and its powerful jet of particles and radiation, transmitted almost directly to Earth from its right location. at the shoulder of Orion
. Within a world-wide team of physicists and astronomers involved in this remarkable discovery, we have been drawn to this experience for its daring, physical and emotional challenge of working long hours in a brutally cold place while by inserting expensive and sensitive equipment. holes were drilled 1.5 miles deep in the ice and allowed all the work to be done. And, of course, for the thrilling opportunity to be the first to scan a brand new telescope and see what it reveals on the heavens.
A Glacial and Remote Neutrino Detector
At more than 9,000 feet above sea level and with average summer temperatures rarely breaking at 22 degrees Fahrenheit, the South Pole does not seem to be the best. great place to do anything, besides boasting to visit a sunny and sunny place for your nostrils. On the other hand, once you realize that the altitude is due to a thick layer of ultrapure ice made of several hundreds of thousands of years of snow and that the low temperatures therein. have frozen, it may not surprise you. telescope builders, the scientific benefits outweigh the forbidding environment. The South Pole now houses the world's largest neutrino detector, IceCube
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It may seem odd that we need a detector as elaborate since it's about 100 billion these fundamental particles pass directly through your vignette. then, they slide effortlessly across the entire Earth without interacting with a single terrestrial atom
In fact, neutrinos are the second most ubiquitous particles, just behind the cosmic background photons scattered by the Big Bang. They comprise one quarter of the known fundamental particles. Yet, because they hardly interact with other topics, they are probably the least well understood.
To catch a handful of these elusive particles, and to discover their sources, physicists need large detectors 0.6 mile wide made of a clear ice-like material. Fortunately, Mother Nature provided this clear ice patch where we could build our detector.
![7_13_IceCube_02 [19659018] The Neutrino Ice Observatory instruments a volume of about one cubic kilometer of clear Antarctic ice with 5,160 digital optical modules (DOMs) at depths between 1450 and 2450 meters. The observatory includes a densely instrumented sub-detector, DeepCore, and a surface air shower set, IceTop. </span> <span class=](https://s.newsweek.com/sites/www.newsweek.com/files/styles/full/public/2018/07/13/713icecube02.jpg)
Felipe Pedreros / IceCube / NSF At the South Pole, several hundred scientists and engineers built and deployed more than 5,000 individual photosensors in 86 separate holes 1.5 mile deep. melted in the polar cap with a custom designed hot water drill. During seven austral summer seasons, we have installed all the sensors. The IceCube network was fully installed in early 2011 and has been collecting data continuously since then.
This set of ice-bound detectors can accurately detect when a neutrino flies over and interacts with a few ground particles that generate bluish dark patterns. Cherenkov light, emitted when charged particles move through a medium like ice at the speed of light
The Blazar emission reaches the Earth: rays gamma (magenta), the most energetic form of light, and elusive particles called neutrinos (gray) formed in the jet of an active galactic core far, far away. The radiation traveled for about 4 billion years before reaching the Earth. The IceCube neutrino observatory at the South Pole has detected the arrival of the incoming IC170922 neutrino in Antarctica on September 22, 2017. After the interaction with an ice molecule, a secondary particle of high energy – a muon – enters IceCube, leaving a trace of blue light behind. Credit: NASA / CI Lab's Goddard Space Flight Center / Nicolle Fuller R / NSF / IceCube
Neutrinos of the Cosmos
The Achilles Heel of Neutrino Detectors is Other particles, from the near atmosphere, can also trigger these bluish Cherenkov light patterns. To eliminate these false signals, the detectors are buried deep in the ice to filter out interference before they can reach the sensitive detector. But despite being less than a mile from solid ice, IceCube is still faced with about 2,500 such particles every second, each of which could possibly be due to a neutrino.
With the expected rate of interest, actual astrophysics neutrino interactions (such as incoming neutrinos from a black hole) hovering at about one per month, we were facing a problem of needle in a haystack.
The IceCube strategy is to only look at events of such energy that they are extremely unlikely to be of atmospheric origin. With these selection criteria and several years of data, IceCube discovered the astrophysical neutrinos that he had been searching for for a long time, but he was unable to identify any individual sources – such as active galactic nuclei or gamma-ray bursts – among dozens of high-energy neutrinos had captured.
To extract the actual sources, IceCube began distributing neutrino arrival alerts in April 2016 with the help of the Astrophysical Multimessenger Observatory Network at Penn State. Over the next 16 months, 11 IceCube-AMON neutrino alerts were distributed via AMON and the gamma coordinate system, minutes or seconds after being detected at the South Pole.
Sept. 7 On February 22, 2017, IceCube alerted the international astronomy community about the detection of a high-energy neutrino. About twenty observatories on Earth and in space made follow-up observations, which made it possible to identify what the scientists consider as a source of neutrinos with very high energy and thus of rays. cosmic. In addition to neutrinos, observations made across the electromagnetic spectrum included gamma rays, X-rays, and optical and radio radiation. These observatories are led by international teams with a total of over 1000 scientists supported by funding agencies in countries around the world. Nicolle Fuller R / NSF / IceCube
A New Window on the Universe
Alerts Initiate an Automated Sequence of Observations to the Rays X and ultraviolet with Neil from the NASA Gehrels Swift Observatory has led to further studies with NASA's Space Telescope and Spectroscopic Nuclear Space Telescope and 13 other observatories around the world.
Swift was the first company to identify the flared blazar TXS 0506 + 056 as possible. source of the neutrino event. Fermi's large-area telescope reported that the blazar was in a flaring state, emitting much more gamma radiation than in the past. As the news spread, other observatories enthusiastically embarked on the bandwagon and a wide range of observations ensued. The ground-based MAGIC telescope noted that our neutrino originated from a region producing very high energy gamma rays (each about ten million times more energetic than an X-ray), the first time that it was "high". such a coincidence has never been observed. Other optical observations completed the puzzle by measuring the distance to the blazar TXS 0506 + 056: about four billion light years from Earth
With the earliest identification of a cosmic source of High energy neutrinos, a new branch on astronomy the tree has sprouted. As high-energy neutrino astronomy grows with more data, improved inter-observational coordination and more sensitive detectors, we will be able to map the neutrino sky with more and more accurate accuracy.
the universe to follow, such as: solve the age-old mystery of the origin of cosmic rays surprisingly energetic; test if the space-time itself is foamy, with quantum fluctuations at very small scales of distance, as predicted by some theories of quantum gravity; and to determine exactly how cosmic accelerators, such as those surrounding the black hole TXS 0506 + 056, can accelerate particles at such high energies.
For 20 years, the IceCube Collaboration has had a dream of identifying high energy sources. cosmic neutrinos – and this dream is now a reality.
Doug Cowen, Professor of Physics and Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Pennsylvania State University; Azadeh Keivani, Frontiers of Science Scholar, Columbia University, and Derek Fox, Associate Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Pennsylvania State University. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
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