High-Energy 'Ghost Particles' That Was Detected In Milky Way By IceCube Neutrino Observatory

Space.com

The IceCube Neutrino Observatory has detected a "high-energy neutrino emission from within the Milky Way," according to AAAS.   Credit: IceCube Collaboration/Science Communication Lab for SFB 1491

Transcript

00:00Deep in the Antarctic ice lies the IceCube Neutrino Observatory.

00:07Since 2011, it has been detecting light emitted from particle collisions in the Antarctic ice.

00:14An enormous number of neutrinos pass through the detector every second.

00:20IceCube detects 100,000 neutrinos per year that are created in the Earth's atmosphere.

00:27In contrast, there are only about 100 neutrinos arriving from the cosmos per year.

00:34It is difficult to filter these few cosmic neutrinos out from the rest.

00:39But so far, there has been some evidence that two galaxies are emitting neutrinos.

00:45Researchers of the IceCube collaboration have now succeeded in filtering the large number of neutrinos with the help of machine learning.

00:54Neutrinos can now be found originating from the Milky Way.

01:04We are looking into the future of astronomy research.

01:08New machine learning methods and neutrinos can reveal information from places in the universe that were previously obscured by gas and dust.

01:25Independent researchers are modeling the distribution of neutrinos in the Milky Way.

01:36They expect to find particularly large numbers of these high-energy particles,

01:41where charged particles undergo acceleration in extreme magnetic fields and collide with other particles,

01:49presumably in star-forming regions, something that can be tested with IceCube data in the future.

01:59This observation established neutrinos as a new tool of astrophysics,

02:04which let us peer into regions of space from which light cannot escape.

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