Cosmic neutrinos are hard to identify because they have no mass and they are neutrally charged.
Due to the recent discoveries they have made the IceCube Antarctica Observatory confirms presence of cosmic neutrinos originating from deep space natural accelerators. The new discovery gives researchers the opportunity to deepen their study of the universe and shed light on some phenomena they never knew before.
Cosmic neutrinos are very small space particles that usually go unnoticed because they have no mass. In addition, they are neutrally charged, so scientists have to use highly advanced lenses and sensors in order to get a glimpse of them.
After various failed attempts, space experts have finally come up with a reliable method to identify neutrinos. According to the scientific paper they have published in the journal Physical Review Letters, the invisible particles were first noticed indirectly. Charged particles called muons leave trails of light every time neutrinos collide with ice atoms in space, so the IceCube Antarctica Observatory has paid close attention to them in the past years.
By analyzing muons, researchers have identified 35,000 possible neutrinos between 2010 and 2012. Unfortunately, only 20 of them had all the necessary characteristics to be labeled as dark matter particles.
The IceCube Observatory from Antarctica has been purposefully designed to capture the remotest phenomena in the universe. Equipped with highly sensitive sensors, the space machinery is the only one that can actually observe muons’ light, scientists have explained.
According to Vladimir Papitashvili, an astrophysics experts at the Nationwide Science Basis’s (NSF) Division of Polar Packages, the Observatory was built with the help of funding agencies from various countries of the world. The sensors are the only ones that can currently identify light emerging from deep space collisions of high-energy particles, the expert added.
Vladimir Papitashvili went on to explain the consequences of the neutrinos discovery for the entire science community. The astrophysics professor thinks the new information on neutrinos will be used to better understand the dark matter of the universe. The recently confirmed neutrinos particles are the only ones that come from exotic areas of the space that no one has ever studies before.
Since neutrinos particles emerge from natural accelerators they could finally provide the answers that scientists have long been looking for in relation to black holes and massive supernova explosions.
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