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The so-called "ghost particles" detected in Antarctica on September 22, 2017, reveal that, traveled 4 billion light-years to reach us and that this particle originated from a blazar, a spiral galaxy with a massive black hole in its center that rotates at high speed: an extremely energetic object. Thus, apparently, apart from neutrinos, gamma rays are partially produced by high-energy protons in supermassive black hole jets like this blazar.
This is a surprising discovery, which not only confirms blazar as a source of high energy neutrinos, but also establishes a new field of study: neutrino astrophysics multi-messenger: the use of different types of detectors gathered to study the same phenomenon.
This same technique was used in the incredible research that confirmed and photographed the neutron stars colliding
Neutrinos from outside the galaxy
The extragalactic high energy neutrinos have been an enigmatic puzzle since their first detection. 2012, identified with the IceCube neutrino detector specialized in the South Pole, taking advantage of the Antarctic ice, says Informe21
Subatomic particles are rare, but they are not much rarer than neutrinos. Their mass is almost zero, they travel at almost the speed of light and do not really interact with normal matter; for them, the universe would be almost disembodied. Hence the name of "ghost particle".
However, that does not mean that they can not interact with the material, and that's where the IceCube observatory of Antarctica comes in, from time to time, a neutrino can interact with
The blazar is TXS 0506 + 065 and is located about 4000 light-years away in the constellation of Orion
Scientists have detected neutrinos from a 1987 supernova in the galactic halo of Via Milky (sn1987a) with energy up to 36 mega-electronvolts.
The neutrinos of 2012 also outweighed any comparison: the neutrino energy was 300 teraelectronvolts, more than 100 million times more energetic or about 20 times more than the LHC, the only one in the world. the most powerful particle accelerator in the world.
Bearing in mind that for neutrinos, the rest of the universe does not really exist, they always travel in a straight line. And that is how experts have discovered where this little subatomic particle came from.
Originally, a blaze at 4,000 million light-years called TXS 0506 + 056, right next to Orion, a discovery that illustrates that the cosmic rays of high energy rays consisting mainly of protons and atomic nuclei also come from the same place.
Many thousands of these highly energetic objects are known in the sky; "It's interesting to see how there was a general consensus in the astrophysical community that blazars were probably not cosmic ray sources, and here we are," he added. says Francis Halzen, a physicist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and principal investigator at the Neutrino Ice Glacial Observatory
Observations were confirmed by two gamma telescopes: the Gamma-Ray Space Telescope Fermi in orbit of NASA. Cherenkov Telescope (MAGIC) in the Canary Islands. They both detected a flash of high energy gamma ray activity from TXS 0506 + 056.
"All the pieces fit together," concludes Albrecht Karle, UW-Madison physicist and co-author of the book published by Science. "The neutrino outbreak in our archival data has become an independent confirmation, and with observations from other observatories, it is convincing that this blazar is a source of extremely energetic neutrinos and, hence, rays. cosmic high energy energy.
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