A cosmic neutrino of unknown origin destroys energy records

A neutrino from the space recently plunged into the Mediterranean Sea with an energy that blows all other neutros known by water.

Packaging a handful of about 220 million electronic volts, this particle was about 20 times more energetic than the highest cosmic neutrinos previously seen, researchers report on 13 February Nature. The particle was viewed by the partially constructed neutrino telescope, or KM3Net.

“They hit the first prize,” says Francis Halzen, a physicist at the University of Wisconsin -Madison and the main investigator of the Neutrino Icecube observatory in Antarctica. “We’ve got data with a much larger detector for 10 years. We’ve never seen such an event.”

Physicists tend to catalog cosmic neutrinos because these light, neutral electric particles can pass wide extension of nearly undisturbed space. The most energetic ones can provide incomparable knowledge of the powerful phenomena that spit on them, such as supermasive black holes. But grid particles barely interact with matter requires giant telescopes made of ice -enclosed sensors, like Icecube, or immersed in water, like KM3Net.

The two neutrino detectors of the KM3Net – one off the coast of Sicily, the other near southern France – are still under construction, but already collect data. Both contain hundreds of meters long, which are stretched with light bunches of light anchored in the sea.

When cosmic neutrinos interact with matter in or near a KM3Net detector, they spawn charged particles like Muons. As those muons take care of through the water, they give poor bluish light ignitions that KM3Net sensors can get. Jump when different sensors announce this light can reveal the path of a particle; The brightness of the blue reflects the energy of the particles.

On February 13, 2023, the nearly Sicily detector was led by an extremely energetic muon traveling nearly parallel to the horizon. At that time, only 21 of the planned 230 sensor cables were in place. Based on the energy and trajectory of Muon, the KM3net scientists determined that it should have been litter from a neutrino from space than by a particle from the atmosphere.

Simulations suggest that Neutrino’s energy was about 220 volts petaelectron. The previous record holder boasted about 10 volts of petaelectron.

“It’s a kind of shocking situation,” says KM3net Luigi Antonio Fusco, a physicist at the University of Salerno in Fisciano, Italy. Likes like neutrino physicists have ever seen fires driven by some ignition sticks, “and then someone comes with a flame.” KM3Net researchers estimate that they expect to see a neutrino of this caliber once every 70 years or more.

“I definitely went to a skeptically kind,” says Erik Blaufuss, a physicist at the University of Maryland in College Park who wrote a comment on the study on the same issue of Nature. “But they make a very convincing case on paper that it’s true.”

To track the origin of Neutrino, the KM3net team cleared data from Gamma Ray, X-ray and radio telescopes. Twelve objects were distinguished in the region of heaven from where Neutrino came from. “Most of them are active galaxy cores,” says Fusco – bright galaxy cores where supermasive black holes are gas and dust. “The problem is that there is so much,” he says. “You really can’t put a single one.”

Another option is that this is the first neutrino observed cosmogenic, created when the cosmic rays of ultrahigh energy mix with photons from the background of the cosmic microwave, the succession of the Big Bang.

“At this point, it is very difficult to make conclusions about origin,” says Koha Murase, a theoretical physicist in Penn State that is not involved in the research. “It’S’Si is dangerous to rely on an event.”

The expansion of KM3Net should improve its ability to NAB Neutrinos and determine their origin. Other neutrino telescopes are also in works, such as a planned Icecube expansion, a observer proposed outside the Vancouver Island of Canada and one under construction in the South China Sea. These tools, Murase says, can help researchers enter the Neutrino native countries with stunning high energy.