Astrophysicists capture a signal from distant worlds

11:43 am to 06.12.2018(Updated 11:49 06.12.2018) Copy link

An international team of astrophysicists, with the participation of the National Nuclear Research University, discovered a signal from high-energy photons emitted by galaxies in Fermi data.

The discovery highlights the origin of high-energy neutrons recorded by the "IceCube" neutron observatory of the Antarctica-Tscott Antarctic Station. The discovery information has been published in Physical Review-D.

The neutrino passes through the places where other particles stumble. For example, the solar neutrino crosses the depths of the sun and provides information on thermonuclear interactions in the sun's core.

High energy neutrons have so far invaded the mysterious outer space, providing information that can not be obtained by other methods of observation.

Scientists from the National University of Nuclear Research (MEFI), as well as colleagues from the French University of Paris-Diderot, the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, and the University of Paris. University of Geneva, have discovered a new component in a gamma ray flux when studying data from a Fermi telescope in a high energy setting (over 300 GHz).

"At energies up to 300 GHz, signals from sources outside our galaxy will be suppressed by gamma ray absorption," said Dimitri Semikoz, a professor at the University of Mivie, in an interview with one of the authors, RIA Novosti. In the space between galaxies, gamma rays are not absorbed in practice, so the new component must have a source in our galaxy.

According to the world, the spectrum of the new component fits perfectly with the large neutrino flux recently discovered in the IceCube experiment. Since this neutrino is always produced with gamma rays with a similar spectrum, scientists assume that both spectra have a common origin.

In the first model, neutrinos and gamma rays are produced in an area of ​​nearby galaxies due to the interaction of cosmic rays, while the second model creates gamma and neutrino radiation resulting from the collapse of dark matter. In our galaxy ".

We can determine which of these patterns is correct from the heterogeneity of the signal during subsequent studies. If the signal comes from the collapse of dark matter, the interest of this study is of great importance. But even if there is a nearby cosmic physical source, it means that for the first time we might have been lucky enough to find the source of cosmic rays, which produces neutrinos and gamma rays.

At the bottom of the Russian lake, Lake Baikal is building a submarine telescope "Gigaton Water Detector" up to 1 square kilometer. The Baikal telescope will look a lot like the sensitivity of the IceCube experiment: for observation of the central part of our galaxy, the Baikal telescope is even better than the IceCube because it is located in the northern hemisphere (researchers observe neutrinos in Antarctica). Through the earth).