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WASHINGTON – For the first time, scientists using NASA's Fermi gamma space telescope have found the source of a high-energy neutrino outside our galaxy.
This neutrino has traveled nearly 3.7 billion light years before being detected on Earth. It's further than any other neutrino that scientists can identify at the origin.
"Again, Fermi has helped to make another giant leap into a growing field that we call multi-messenger astronomy," said Paul Hertz, director of the Astrophysics Division at the headquarters of NASA in Washington. "Neutrinos and gravitational waves provide new types of information about the most extreme environments in the universe, but to better understand what they tell us, we need to connect them to astronomers." Who know the best light. "
High-energy neutrinos are hard-to-capture particles that scientists say are created by scientists – powerful events in the cosmos, such as fusions of galaxies and falling materials on super massive black holes, they travel at speeds close to the speed of light and rarely interact with other materials, allowing them to travel unhindered over distances of billions of light years. [19659002] The discovery of a high energy neutrino September 22, 2017 Astronomers looking to locate its source – a supermassive black hole in a distant galaxy.
Vide o: NASA's Fermi Neutrino Cosmic Links to Monster Black Hole
The neutrino was discovered by an international team of scientists using the National Science IceCube Neutrino Observatory Foundation at Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. Fermi found the source of the neutrino by resuming his way to an explosion of gamma light from a remote supermassive black hole in the constellation of Orion.
Scientists are studying neutrinos, as well as cosmic rays and gamma rays, to understand unfolding in turbulent cosmic environments such as supernovae, black holes and stars. Neutrinos show the complex processes that occur in the environment, and cosmic rays show the strength and speed of violent activity. But scientists rely on gamma rays, the most energetic form of light, to clearly indicate which cosmic source produces these neutrinos and cosmic rays. "The most extreme cosmic explosions produce gravitational waves, and the most extreme cosmic accelerators produce neutrinos and high-energy cosmic rays," says Regina Caputo of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, coordinator of the Analysis of Fermi Large. Zone telescope collaboration. "Thanks to Fermi, gamma rays provide a bridge to each of these new cosmic signals."
The discovery is the subject of two articles published in the journal Science. The source identification document also includes important follow-up observations by Cherenkov telescopes with major atmospheric gamma imaging and additional data from NASA's Neil Gehrels Observatory and many other facilities.
Fermi Detected Gamma Rays of TXS 0506 + 056 Circles Their maximum size, color – from white (low) to magenta (high) – and the associated tone indicate the energy of each ray. The first sequence shows the typical emission; the second shows the eruption of 2017 leading to the detection of neutrinos
Credits: NASA / DOE / Fermi LAT Collab., Matt Russo and Andrew Santaguida / SYSTEM Sounds
Video: Visualization of the gamma rays of Blazar TXS 0506 + 056
On September 22, 2017, scientists using IceCube detected signs of a striking neutrino Antarctic ice with an energy of about 300 trillion electrons. volts – more than 45 times the achievable energy in the most powerful particle accelerator on Earth. This high energy strongly suggested that the neutrino had to come from outside our solar system. The return of the path through IceCube indicated where the neutrino was coming into the sky, and automated alerts have warned astronomers around the world to search in this region for rashes or blowouts that could be associated with it. ;event.
Data from the Fermi Large Area Telescope revealed increased gamma radiation emission from a well-known active galaxy at the time of neutrino arrival. It's a type of active galaxy called a blazar, with a supermassive black hole with millions to billions of times the mass of the Sun that projects outward jets of particles in opposite directions to almost the speed of light. Blazars are particularly bright and active because one of these jets happens to point almost directly to the Earth.
The scientist Fermi Yasuyuki Tanaka of the Hiroshima University in Japan was the first to associate the neutrino event with the designated blazar TXS 0506 + 056 (TXS 0506)
"The Fermi's LAT monitors the entire sky in gamma rays and maintains, "said Sara Buson, NASA's postdoctoral fellow at Goddard, who analyzed the data with Anna Franckowiak, a researcher at the Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron Research Center in Zeuthen, Germany. "This blazar is located near the center of sky position determined by IceCube and, at the time of neutrino detection, was the most active Fermi has seen in a decade."
The Gamma-Ray Space Telescope NASA is a partnership in astrophysics and particle physics, developed in collaboration with the US Department of Energy and with major contributions from academic institutions and partners in France, Alle Italy, Japan, Sweden and the United States. The NASA Postdoctoral Fellowship Program is administered by the Universities Space Research Association under contract with NASA.
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