Latest news with #RosaConiglione
Jordan Times
15-02-2025
- Science
- Jordan Times
Unfinished deepsea observatory spots highest-energy neutrino ever
The Mediterranean Sea off the French city of Toulon, near where an underwater detector is hunting for neutrinos (AFP photo) PARIS — A neutrino with 30 times more energy than any previously seen on Earth was detected by an unfinished observatory at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea after travelling from beyond this galaxy, scientists said on Wednesday. Neutrinos are the second most abundant particle in the universe. Known as ghost particles, they have no electric charge, almost no mass and effortlessly pass through most matter -- such as our world or bodies -- without anyone most violently explosive events in the universe -- such as a star going supernova, two neutron stars smashing into each other or the almighty suck of supermassive black holes -- create what is called ultra-high-energy neutrinos. Because these particles interact so little with matter, they glide easily away from the violence that created them, travelling in a straight line across the universe. When they finally arrive at Earth, neutrinos serve as "special cosmic messengers" offering a glimpse into the far reaches of the cosmos that is otherwise hidden from our view, Italian researcher Rosa Coniglione said in a statement. However, these ghost particles are extremely difficult to detect. One way is by using water. When light passes through water, it slows down. This sometimes allows quick-moving particles to overtake light -- while still not going faster than the speed of light. When this happens, it creates a bluish glow called "Cherenkov light" that can be detected by extraordinarily sensitive sensors. But to observe this light requires a huge amount of water -- at least one cubic kilometre, the equivalent of 400,000 Olympic swimming pools. That is why the Cubic Kilometre Neutrino Telescope, or KM3NeT, lies at the bottom of the Mediterranean. Think of a ping pong ball The European-led facility is still under construction, and spread over two sites. Its ARCA detector, which is interested in astronomy, is nearly 3,500 metres underwater off the coast of Sicily. The neutrino-hunting ORCA detector is in the depths near the French city of Toulon. Cables hundreds of metres long equipped with photomultipliers -- which amplify miniscule amounts of light -- have been anchored to the seabed nearby. Eventually 200,000 photomultipliers will be arrayed in the abyss. But the ARCA detector was operating at just a tenth of what will be its eventual power when it spotted something strange on February 13, 2023, according to new research published in the journal Nature. A muon, which is a heavy electron produced by a neutrino, "crossed the entire detector, inducing signals in more than one-third of the active sensors," according to a statement from KM3NeT, which brings together 350 scientists from institutions in 21 countries. The neutrino had an estimated energy of 220 petaelectronvolts -- or 220 million billion electron volts. A neutrino with such a massive amount of energy had never before been observed on Earth. "It is roughly the energy of a ping pong ball falling from one metre height," Dutch physicist and KM3NeT researcher Aart Heijboer told a press conference. "But the amazing thing is that all this energy is contained in one single elementary" particle, he added. For humans to create such a particle would require building the equivalent of a Large Hadron Collider "all around the Earth at the distance of the geostationary satellites", said French physicist Paschal Coyle. Blazars as source? With this kind of energy, the event that created this neutrino must have been beyond Milky Way. The exact distance remains unknown, "but what we are quite sure is that it's not coming from our galaxy", said French physicist Damien Dornic. The astrophysicists have some theories about what could have caused such a neutrino. Among the suspects are 12 blazars -- the incredibly bright cores of galaxies with supermassive black holes. But more research is needed. "At the time this event happened, our neutrino alert system was still in development," Heijboer emphasised. If another neutrino is detected near the end of this year, an alert will be sent in seconds to "all the telescopes around the world so that they can point in that direction" to try to spot the source, he said. Page 2
CNN
12-02-2025
- Science
- CNN
Scientists detect record-breaking ‘ghost particle' in the Mediterranean Sea
Sign up for CNN's Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more. CNN — 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. Neutrinos, which don't have an electric charge, can be formed when energetic protons combine with photons from radiation left over from the big bang that created the universe. The particles travel at nearly the speed of light through the cosmos. '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. The neutrino travels through the network of detectors, setting off signals and emitting a bluish light. 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. Each large detection unit is filled with 18 spherical optical modules, seen before being packaged together. 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.
CNN
12-02-2025
- Science
- CNN
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.
USA Today
12-02-2025
- Science
- USA Today
Discovery: Powerful 'ghost particle' with clues about the universe
Discovery: Powerful 'ghost particle' with clues about the universe They're tiny, invisible, and travel across the universe. And trillions of them just flew through your body. What are they? Neutrinos ‒ and scientists Wednesday announced the discovery of the most powerful one ever seen. Neutrinos are ghostly subatomic particles that can travel in a straight line for billions of light-years, passing unhindered through galaxies, stars and anything else in their path. Because they rarely interact with matter and have almost no mass they are often referred to as "ghost particles." The newly discovered neutrino's energy is estimated to be around 30 times higher than any neutrino previously detected. The result suggests that the particle came from beyond our Milky Way, although its precise origin remains to be determined. The new research was published Wednesday in the peer-reviewed British journal Nature. What are neutrinos? Difficult to detect, neutrinos are extremely tiny particles and are among the most abundant in the universe. They don't interact much with anything and travel close to the speed of light. 'Neutrinos are one of the most mysterious of elementary particles," explained Rosa Coniglione, researcher at the National Institute for Nuclear Physics in Italy, one of the scientists who made the discovery. "They have no electric charge, almost no mass and interact only weakly with matter. They 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." Although neutrinos are the second most abundant particle in the universe after photons, their weak interaction with matter makes them very hard to detect and requires enormous detectors, such as the one that made this discovery. This particle was spotted by the Cubic Kilometer Neutrino Telescope (KM3NeT), a collection of light-detecting glass spheres on the floor of the Mediterranean Sea, on February 13, 2023, according to Nature. How energetic was the neutrino? The neutrino in question was 30 times more energetic than any other neutrino detected to date, a quadrillion times more energetic than particles of light called photons and 10,000 times more energetic than particles made by the world's largest and most powerful particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva. "The energy of this neutrino is exceptional," added physicist Aart Heijboer of the Nikhef National Institute for Subatomic Physics in the Netherlands, another of the researchers. Where do neutrinos come from? High-energy neutrinos arise from particle collisions occurring in violent events such as a black hole eating matter or bursts of gamma rays during the explosive deaths of stars. They also can be produced by interactions between high-energy cosmic rays and the universe's background radiation. Scientists say the study of neutrinos is still in its formative stages. "It's basically just trying to understand what is going on in the cosmos," Heijboer said. Contributing: Jessica Bies, The News Journal; Reuters
Yahoo
12-02-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Scientists detect record-breaking ‘ghost particle' in the Mediterranean Sea
Sign up for CNN's Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more. 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. 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. 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.
