New evidence suggests that particles detected in Antarctica do not fit the standard model

A team of researchers at Penn State University has uncovered new evidence suggesting that some particles detected in Antarctica do not match the standard model. They wrote a paper outlining their arguments and posted it on the arXiv pre-print server.

Previous research has shown that when low-energy cosmic particles meet the Earth, they are likely to pass through; high energy particles, on the other hand, are almost certain to fall on something else, preventing them from going from one room to the other. Instead, they cause an avalanche of collisions, creating a shower of particles that eventually emerge from the other side of the planet. But what would happen if a high-energy particle had to go all the way without creating a particle shower? This would mean that there is probably a particle that is not described by the standard model – and that's exactly what researchers are reporting studying particles detected on the Antarctic.

To date, two strange particle events have been detected by a sensor attached to a high-altitude balloon hovering over Antarctica as part of a project called Antarctic Transient Pulse Antenna (ANITA). . The first detection took place in 2006 and the second in 2014. Both indicated that a high-energy particle had crossed the planet in one way or another without meeting anything. The first detection was attributed to equipment problems or some other unknown factor. The second has raised more concern, but not enough for anyone seriously considering challenging the standard model. In this new effort, the researchers said they found other evidence of the same type of particles, suggesting that both anomalies could actually represent unknown particles.

The new evidence came in the form of sensor data from the IceCube experiment in which sensors buried in the Antarctic ice continuously detect particle related events. The sensor data showed that three events with unexplained properties had occurred. The researchers suggest that the two unrelated data sources indicate that it is time to start asking if the anomalies suggest the possibility of particles beyond the standard model.

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More information:
ANITA anomalous events as signatures of a particle beyond the standard model and observations at the support of IceCube, arXiv: 1809.09615 [astro-ph.HE] arxiv.org/abs/1809.09615