
Most energetic ‘ghost particle' from space detected in the deep ocean
Astronomers using a giant network of sensors, still under construction at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea, have found the highest-energy cosmic 'ghost particle' ever detected.
The neutrino, as the particle is formally known, is 30 times more energetic than any of the few hundreds of previously detected neutrinos.
These tiny, high-energy particles from space are often referred to as 'ghostly' because they are extremely volatile, or vaporous, and can pass through any kind of matter without changing. Neutrinos, which arrive at Earth from the far reaches of the cosmos, have almost no mass. The particles travel through the most extreme environments, including stars, planets and entire galaxies, and yet their structure remains intact.
An analysis of the neutrino authored by the KM3NeT Collaboration, which includes more than 360 scientists from around the world, was published Wednesday in the journal Nature.
'Neutrinos … are special cosmic messengers, bringing us unique information on the mechanisms involved in the most energetic phenomena and allowing us to explore the farthest reaches of the Universe,' said study coauthor Rosa Coniglione, KM3NeT deputy spokesperson and researcher at Italy's INFN National Institute for Nuclear Physics, in a statement.
The record-breaking neutrino, named KM3-230213A, had the energy of 220 million billion electron volts. This astonishing amount makes it around 30,000 times more powerful than what the Large Hadron Collider particle accelerator at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) near Geneva, Switzerland — known for supercharging particles to nearly the speed of light — is capable of, according to the study authors.
'One way I like to think about it is that the energy of this single neutrino is equivalent to the energy released by splitting not one uranium atom, or ten such atoms, or even a million of them,' said study coauthor Dr. Brad K. Gibson in an email. 'This one little neutrino had as much energy as the energy released by splitting one billion uranium atoms … a mind-boggling number when we compare the energies of our nuclear fission reactors with this one single ethereal neutrino.'
The particle provides some of the first evidence that such highly energetic neutrinos can be created in the universe. The team believes the neutrino came from beyond the Milky Way galaxy, but they have yet to identify its exact origin point, which raises the question of what created the neutrino and sent it flying across the cosmos in the first place — perhaps an extreme environment such as a supermassive black hole, gamma ray burst or supernova remnant.
The groundbreaking detection is opening up a new chapter of neutrino astronomy, as well as a new observational window into the universe, said study coauthor Paschal Coyle, KM3NeT spokesperson and researcher at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique – Centre de Physique des Particules de Marseille in France.
'KM3NeT has begun to probe a range of energy and sensitivity where detected neutrinos may originate from extreme astrophysical phenomena,' Coyle said.
A light in the ocean
Neutrinos are difficult to detect because they don't often interact with their surroundings — but they do interact with ice and water. When neutrinos interact directly with the detectors, they radiate a bluish light that can be picked up by a nearby network of digital optical sensors embedded in ice or floating in water.
For example, the IceCube Neutrino Observatory at the South Pole includes a grid of more than 5,000 sensors embedded in the Antarctic ice. The detector has been operating since 2011, and has discovered hundreds of neutrinos. Scientists have been able to trace some of them back to their cosmic sources, such as a blazar or the bright core of an active galaxy.
An international team conceived the idea of a network of detectors in the early 2010s — known as the Cubic Kilometre Neutrino Telescope, or KM3NeT — that might be able to pick up neutrinos in the deep ocean. Installation of the network began in 2015.
The KM3NeT made the record-breaking detection on February 13, 2023, when the particle lit up one of its two detectors. ARCA, or the Astroparticle Research with Cosmics in the Abyss, rests at a depth of 11,319 feet (3,450 meters), while ORCA, or Oscillation Research with Cosmics in the Abyss, is at a depth of 8,038 feet (2,450 meters) at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea.
The ARCA detector, off the Sicilian coast near Capo Passero, Italy, was designed to pick up on high-energy neutrinos, while ORCA, near Toulon in southeastern France, is dedicated to the search for low-energy neutrinos.
The KM3NeT, which includes a grid of sensors anchored to the seabed, remains under construction. But enough detectors were in place to pick up on the high-energy neutrino, the study authors said.
The ARCA detector was operating with just 10% of its planned components in place when the particle traced a nearly horizonal path through the entire telescope, setting off signals in more than one-third of the active sensors. The detector recorded over 28,000 photons of light produced by the charged particle.
Mysterious, powerful origins
If the energy within the neutrino was converted for our understanding of everyday objects, it would amount to 0.04 joules, or the energy of a ping-pong ball dropped from a height of 3.28 feet (1 meter), said study coauthor Aart Heijboer, physics coordinator of KM3NeT and professor at the Dutch National Institute for Subatomic Physics, or NIKHEF, and University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands.
That amount could power a small LED light for about 1 second, he said.
'So it is not a large amount of energy for every-day objects, but the fact that such an analogy with the every-day world is even possible is remarkable in itself. All this energy was contained in one single, elementary particle,' Heijboer said in an email.
On a particle scale, the neutrino was considered ultra-energetic, with roughly 1 billion times 100 million times the energy of visible light photons, according to the study authors.
Detecting neutrinos on Earth allows researchers to trace them back to their sources. Understanding where these particles come from could reveal more about the origin of mysterious cosmic rays, long thought to be the primary source of neutrinos when the rays strike Earth's atmosphere.
The most highly energetic particles in the universe, cosmic rays bombard Earth from space. These rays are mostly made up of protons or atomic nuclei, and they are unleashed across the universe because whatever produces them is such a powerful particle accelerator that it dwarfs the capabilities of the Large Hadron Collider. Neutrinos could inform astronomers about where cosmic rays come from and what launches them across the universe.
Researchers believe something powerful unleashed the newly found neutrino, such as a gamma-ray burst or the interaction of cosmic rays with photons from the cosmic microwave background, which is leftover radiation from the big bang 13.8 billion years ago.
During the study, the authors also identified 12 potential blazars that may be responsible for creating the neutrino. The blazars are compatible with the estimated direction the particle traveled from, based on data collected by the detectors and cross-referenced data from gamma-ray, X-ray and radio telescopes. But more research is needed.
'Many cosmic-neutrino detections fail to show strong correlations with catalogued objects, perhaps indicating source populations that are very distant from Earth, or hinting at an as-yet-undiscovered type of astrophysical object,' said Erik K. Blaufuss, research scientist and particle astrophysicist in the department of physics at the University of Maryland, College Park, in an accompanying article. Blaufuss was not involved in the study.
'Although a full understanding of the origins of this event will take time, it remains an extraordinary welcome message for KM3NeT,' he said.

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CNN
an hour ago
- CNN
A ‘dragon prince' dinosaur is redrawing the tyrannosaur family tree
Scientists have identified a previously unknown 86 million-year-old dinosaur species that fills an early gap in the fossil record of tyrannosaurs, revealing how they evolved to become massive apex predators. Researchers analyzing the species' remains have named it Khankhuuluu mongoliensis, which translates to 'dragon prince of Mongolia,' because it was small compared with its much larger relatives such as Tyrannosaurus rex, whose name means 'the tyrant lizard king.' The newly identified dinosaur was the closest known ancestor of tyrannosaurs and likely served as a transitional species from earlier tyrannosauroid species, according to the findings published Wednesday in the journal Nature. Based on a reexamination of two partial skeletons uncovered in Mongolia's Gobi Desert in 1972 and 1973, the new study suggests that three big migrations between Asia and North America led tyrannosauroids to diversify and eventually reach a gargantuan size in the late Cretaceous Period before going extinct 66 million years ago. 'This discovery of Khankhuuluu forced us to look at the tyrannosaur family tree in a very different light,' said study coauthor Darla Zelenitsky, associate professor within the department of Earth, energy, and environment at the University of Calgary, in an email. 'Before this, there was a lot of confusion about who was related to who when it came to tyrannosaur species. What started as the discovery of a new species ended up with us rewriting the family history of tyrannosaurs.' Tyrannosaurs, known scientifically as Eutyrannosaurians, bring to mind hulking dinosaurs like Tyrannosaurus rex and Tarbosaurus, which weighed multiple metric tons and could take down equally large prey. With short arms and massive heads, they walked on two legs and boasted sharp teeth, Zelenitsky said. But tyrannosaurs didn't start out that way. They evolved from smaller dinosaurs before dominating the landscapes of North America and Asia between 85 million and 66 million years ago, the researchers said. While Tarbosaurus, an ancestor of T. rex, clocked in at between 3,000 and 6,000 kilograms (6,613 pounds and 13,227 pounds), the fleet-footed Khankhuuluu mongoliensis likely weighed only around 750 kilograms (1,653 pounds), spanned just 2 meters (6.5 feet) at the hips and 4 meters (13 feet) in length, according to the study authors. Comparing the two dinosaurs would be like putting a horse next to an elephant —Khankhuuluu would have reached T. rex's thigh in height, Zelenitsky said. 'Khankhuuluu was almost a tyrannosaur, but not quite,' Zelenitsky said. 'The snout bone was hollow rather than solid, and the bones around the eye didn't have all the horns and bumps seen in T. rex or other tyrannosaurs.' Khankhuuluu mongoliensis, or a closely related ancestor species, likely migrated from Asia to North America across a land bridge between Alaska and Siberia that connected the continents 85 million years ago, Zelenitsky said. Because of this migrant species, we now know that tyrannosaurs actually evolved first on the North American continent and remained there exclusively over the next several million years, she said. 'As the many tyrannosaur species evolved on the continent, they became larger and larger.' Due to the poor fossil record, it's unclear what transpired in Asia between 80 million to 85 million years ago, she added. While some Khankhuuluu may have remained in Asia, they were likely replaced later on by larger tyrannosaurs 79 million years ago. Meanwhile, another tyrannosaur species crossed the land bridge back to Asia 78 million years ago, resulting in the evolution of two related but very different subgroups of tyrannosaurs, Zelenitsky said. One was a gigantic, deep-snouted species, while the other known as Alioramins was slender and small. These smaller dinosaurs have been dubbed 'Pinocchio rexes' for their long, shallow snouts. Both types of tyrannosaurs were able to live in Asia and not compete with each other because the larger dinosaurs were top predators, while Alioramins were mid-level predators going after smaller prey — think cheetahs or jackals in African ecosystems today, Zelenitsky said. 'Because of their small size, Alioramins were long thought to be primitive tyrannosaurs, but we novelly show Alioramins uniquely evolved smallness as they had 'miniaturized' their bodies within a part of the tyrannosaur family tree that were all otherwise giants,' Zelenitsky said. One more migration happened as tyrannosaurs continued to evolve, and a gigantic tyrannosaur species crossed back into North America 68 million years ago, resulting in Tyrannosaurus rex, Zelenitsky said. 'The success and diversity of tyrannosaurs is thanks to a few migrations between the two continents, starting with Khankhuuluu,' she said. 'Tyrannosaurs were in the right place at the right time. They were able to take advantage of moving between continents, likely encountering open niche spaces, and quickly evolving to become large, efficient killing machines.' The new findings support previous research suggesting that Tyrannosaurus rex's direct ancestor originated in Asia and migrated to North America via a land bridge and underscore the importance of Asia in the evolutionary success of the tyrannosaur family, said Cassius Morrison, a doctoral student of paleontology at University College London. Morrison was not involved in the new research. 'The new species provides essential data and information in part of the family tree with few species, helping us to understand the evolutionary transition of tyrannosaurs from small/ medium predators to large apex predators,' Morrison wrote in an email. The study also shows that the Alioramini group, once considered distant relatives, were very close cousins of T. rex. What makes the fossils of the new species so crucial is their age — 20 million years older than T. rex, said Steve Brusatte, professor and personal chair of Palaeontology and Evolution at the University of Edinburgh. Brusatte was not involved in the new study. 'There are so few fossils from this time, and that is why these scientists describe it as 'murky,'' Brusatte said. 'It has been a frustrating gap in the record, like if you suspected something really important happened in your family history at a certain time, like a marriage that started a new branch of the family or immigration to a new country, but you had no records to document it. The tyrannosaur family tree was shaped by migration, just like so many of our human families.' With only fragments of fossils available, it's been difficult to understand the variation of tyrannosaurs as they evolved, said Thomas Carr, associate professor of biology at Carthage College in Wisconsin and director of the Carthage Institute of Paleontology. Carr was not involved in the new research. But the new study sheds light on the dinosaurs' diversity and clarifies which ones existed when — and how they overlapped with one another, he said. More samples from the fossil record will provide additional clarity, but the new work illustrates the importance of reexamining fossils collected earlier. 'We know so much more about tyrannosaurs now,' Carr said. 'A lot of these historical specimens are definitely worth their weight in gold for a second look.' When the fossils were collected half a century ago, they were only briefly described at the time, Brusatte said. 'So many of us in the paleontology community knew that these Mongolian fossils were lurking in museum drawers, waiting to be studied properly, and apt to tell their own important part of the tyrannosaur story,' he said. 'It's almost like there was a non-disclosure agreement surrounding these fossils, and it's now expired, and they can come out and tell their story.'


CNN
an hour ago
- CNN
A ‘dragon prince' dinosaur is redrawing the tyrannosaur family tree
Scientists have identified a previously unknown 86 million-year-old dinosaur species that fills an early gap in the fossil record of tyrannosaurs, revealing how they evolved to become massive apex predators. Researchers analyzing the species' remains have named it Khankhuuluu mongoliensis, which translates to 'dragon prince of Mongolia,' because it was small compared with its much larger relatives such as Tyrannosaurus rex, whose name means 'the tyrant lizard king.' The newly identified dinosaur was the closest known ancestor of tyrannosaurs and likely served as a transitional species from earlier tyrannosauroid species, according to the findings published Wednesday in the journal Nature. Based on a reexamination of two partial skeletons uncovered in Mongolia's Gobi Desert in 1972 and 1973, the new study suggests that three big migrations between Asia and North America led tyrannosauroids to diversify and eventually reach a gargantuan size in the late Cretaceous Period before going extinct 66 million years ago. 'This discovery of Khankhuuluu forced us to look at the tyrannosaur family tree in a very different light,' said study coauthor Darla Zelenitsky, associate professor within the department of Earth, energy, and environment at the University of Calgary, in an email. 'Before this, there was a lot of confusion about who was related to who when it came to tyrannosaur species. What started as the discovery of a new species ended up with us rewriting the family history of tyrannosaurs.' Tyrannosaurs, known scientifically as Eutyrannosaurians, bring to mind hulking dinosaurs like Tyrannosaurus rex and Tarbosaurus, which weighed multiple metric tons and could take down equally large prey. With short arms and massive heads, they walked on two legs and boasted sharp teeth, Zelenitsky said. But tyrannosaurs didn't start out that way. They evolved from smaller dinosaurs before dominating the landscapes of North America and Asia between 85 million and 66 million years ago, the researchers said. While Tarbosaurus, an ancestor of T. rex, clocked in at between 3,000 and 6,000 kilograms (6,613 pounds and 13,227 pounds), the fleet-footed Khankhuuluu mongoliensis likely weighed only around 750 kilograms (1,653 pounds), spanned just 2 meters (6.5 feet) at the hips and 4 meters (13 feet) in length, according to the study authors. Comparing the two dinosaurs would be like putting a horse next to an elephant —Khankhuuluu would have reached T. rex's thigh in height, Zelenitsky said. 'Khankhuuluu was almost a tyrannosaur, but not quite,' Zelenitsky said. 'The snout bone was hollow rather than solid, and the bones around the eye didn't have all the horns and bumps seen in T. rex or other tyrannosaurs.' Khankhuuluu mongoliensis, or a closely related ancestor species, likely migrated from Asia to North America across a land bridge between Alaska and Siberia that connected the continents 85 million years ago, Zelenitsky said. Because of this migrant species, we now know that tyrannosaurs actually evolved first on the North American continent and remained there exclusively over the next several million years, she said. 'As the many tyrannosaur species evolved on the continent, they became larger and larger.' Due to the poor fossil record, it's unclear what transpired in Asia between 80 million to 85 million years ago, she added. While some Khankhuuluu may have remained in Asia, they were likely replaced later on by larger tyrannosaurs 79 million years ago. Meanwhile, another tyrannosaur species crossed the land bridge back to Asia 78 million years ago, resulting in the evolution of two related but very different subgroups of tyrannosaurs, Zelenitsky said. One was a gigantic, deep-snouted species, while the other known as Alioramins was slender and small. These smaller dinosaurs have been dubbed 'Pinocchio rexes' for their long, shallow snouts. Both types of tyrannosaurs were able to live in Asia and not compete with each other because the larger dinosaurs were top predators, while Alioramins were mid-level predators going after smaller prey — think cheetahs or jackals in African ecosystems today, Zelenitsky said. 'Because of their small size, Alioramins were long thought to be primitive tyrannosaurs, but we novelly show Alioramins uniquely evolved smallness as they had 'miniaturized' their bodies within a part of the tyrannosaur family tree that were all otherwise giants,' Zelenitsky said. One more migration happened as tyrannosaurs continued to evolve, and a gigantic tyrannosaur species crossed back into North America 68 million years ago, resulting in Tyrannosaurus rex, Zelenitsky said. 'The success and diversity of tyrannosaurs is thanks to a few migrations between the two continents, starting with Khankhuuluu,' she said. 'Tyrannosaurs were in the right place at the right time. They were able to take advantage of moving between continents, likely encountering open niche spaces, and quickly evolving to become large, efficient killing machines.' The new findings support previous research suggesting that Tyrannosaurus rex's direct ancestor originated in Asia and migrated to North America via a land bridge and underscore the importance of Asia in the evolutionary success of the tyrannosaur family, said Cassius Morrison, a doctoral student of paleontology at University College London. Morrison was not involved in the new research. 'The new species provides essential data and information in part of the family tree with few species, helping us to understand the evolutionary transition of tyrannosaurs from small/ medium predators to large apex predators,' Morrison wrote in an email. The study also shows that the Alioramini group, once considered distant relatives, were very close cousins of T. rex. What makes the fossils of the new species so crucial is their age — 20 million years older than T. rex, said Steve Brusatte, professor and personal chair of Palaeontology and Evolution at the University of Edinburgh. Brusatte was not involved in the new study. 'There are so few fossils from this time, and that is why these scientists describe it as 'murky,'' Brusatte said. 'It has been a frustrating gap in the record, like if you suspected something really important happened in your family history at a certain time, like a marriage that started a new branch of the family or immigration to a new country, but you had no records to document it. The tyrannosaur family tree was shaped by migration, just like so many of our human families.' With only fragments of fossils available, it's been difficult to understand the variation of tyrannosaurs as they evolved, said Thomas Carr, associate professor of biology at Carthage College in Wisconsin and director of the Carthage Institute of Paleontology. Carr was not involved in the new research. But the new study sheds light on the dinosaurs' diversity and clarifies which ones existed when — and how they overlapped with one another, he said. More samples from the fossil record will provide additional clarity, but the new work illustrates the importance of reexamining fossils collected earlier. 'We know so much more about tyrannosaurs now,' Carr said. 'A lot of these historical specimens are definitely worth their weight in gold for a second look.' When the fossils were collected half a century ago, they were only briefly described at the time, Brusatte said. 'So many of us in the paleontology community knew that these Mongolian fossils were lurking in museum drawers, waiting to be studied properly, and apt to tell their own important part of the tyrannosaur story,' he said. 'It's almost like there was a non-disclosure agreement surrounding these fossils, and it's now expired, and they can come out and tell their story.'


Hamilton Spectator
5 hours ago
- Hamilton Spectator
‘The missing link': New early tyrannosaur species discovered by Calgary researchers
CALGARY - Scientists from the University of Calgary have discovered a new dinosaur specimen that they say appears to be the 'missing link' in the evolution of tyrannosaurs. The specimen was originally discovered in Mongolia's Gobi Desert over 50 years ago in the 1970s. But its significance wasn't recognized until Darla Zelenitsky, an associate professor in the university's faculty of science, sent graduate student Jared Voris to Mongolia on a research trip. 'He was there a couple of years ago on this research trip and looked at the fossil and texted me (that) he thought it was a new species. I was like, 'yay,'' Zelenitsky told The Canadian Press. 'I said, 'This is good, but we don't want to jump the gun on this.' It turned out it (was) a new species.' The species, Khankhuuluu mongoliensis — meaning 'Dragon Prince' or 'Prince of Dragons of Mongolia' — is believed to have crossed via a land bridge from Siberia to Alaska roughly 85 million years ago. Zelenitsky said it appears to sit on the evolutionary scale between smaller tyrannosauroids and tyrannosaurs. 'It's the missing link between smaller tyrannosauroids and the large predatory tyrannosaurs,' she said. 'This missing link was around 750 kilograms. Its ancestors were a couple of hundred kilograms and just tiny, but then when you get to tyrannosaurs proper, they were over a thousand kilograms, up to estimates of 5,000 kilograms.' The findings were published Wednesday in the British weekly scientific journal 'Nature.' 'It's really exciting to be involved in a discovery of something that's been sitting in a drawer for 50 years. But it's even more exciting when it's a PhD student that makes that discovery,' Zelenitsky added. 'This discovery forced us to look at the family tree of tyrannosaurs in a very different light. It ended up with us rewriting the family history of tyrannosaurs.' The arrival of Khankhuuluu or a similar species after moving from Asia to North America may have been the result of following their prey to a new location, said Zelenitsky. 'It's possible that there weren't many tyrannosaur type predators so it's possible they were able to take over that niche in North America and moved to the top of the food chain,' she said. 'Tyrannosaurs were in the right place at the right time. It allowed them to diversity and evolve a large body size, ultimately becoming the massive apex predator that terrorized North America and Asia during the late Cretaceous period.' Zelenitsky said the evolution to the tyrannosaur happened rapidly, geologically speaking, and probably took a few million years. She has co-authored over 50 different publications during her career and was part of a team that first found evidence of feathered dinosaurs in North America. This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 11, 2025. Error! Sorry, there was an error processing your request. There was a problem with the recaptcha. Please try again. You may unsubscribe at any time. By signing up, you agree to our terms of use and privacy policy . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google privacy policy and terms of service apply. Want more of the latest from us? Sign up for more at our newsletter page .