For the first time, researchers reveal the origin of neutrinos, elementary particles that reach our planet from the depths of the Universe.
Our planet’s atmosphere is continuously bombarded by cosmic rays. These consist of electrically charged particles of extremely high energies — up to 1020 electron volts. For reference, that is a million times more than the energy achieved in the world’s most powerful particle accelerator, CERN’s Large Hadron Collider near Geneva. The incredibly energetic particles come from deep outer space and have traveled billions of light years. Where do they originate, what shoots them through the Universe with such tremendous force? These questions have remained among the greatest challenges of astrophysics for over a century.
Cosmic rays’ birthplaces produce neutrinos. These neutral particles are very difficult to detect. They have almost no mass and barely interact with matter. They race through the Universe and can travel right through galaxies, planets, and the human body almost without a trace. “Astrophysical neutrinos are produced exclusively in processes involving cosmic ray acceleration,” explains astrophysics Professor Sara Buson from Julius-Maximilians-Universität (JMU) Würzburg in Bavaria, Germany. This is precisely what makes these neutrinos unique messengers paving the way to pinpoint cosmic ray sources.
Neutrino . Despite the vast amount of data that astrophysicists have collected, the association of high-energy neutrinos with the astrophysical sources that originate them has remained an unsolved problem for years. Sara Buson has always considered it a major challenge. It was in 2017 that the researcher and collaborators first brought a blazar (TXS 0506+056) into the discussion as a potential neutrino source in the journal Science. Blazars are active galactic nuclei powered by supermassive black holes that emit much more radiation than their entire galaxy. A scientific debate was sparked by the publication about whether there truly is a connection between blazars and high-energy neutrinos.
Source: This news is originally published by scitechdaily