neutrinos Archives

June 30, 2023June 30, 2023 by Carolyn Collins Petersen

IceCube Makes a Neutrino Map of the Milky Way

An artist’s concept of the Milky Way seen through a neutrino lens (blue). Credit: IceCube Collaboration/U.S. National Science Foundation (Lily Le & Shawn Johnson)/ESO (S. Brunier)

We’ve seen the Milky Way with ultraviolet eyes, through x-ray vision, gamma-ray views, radio emissions, microwaves, and visible light. Now, consider a neutrino point of view. Thanks to the IceCube Collaboration, we get to see our home galaxy through the lens of this mysterious particle. It’s an eerie sight that also tells us our galaxy isn’t quite like the others. It’s a neutrino desert.

March 30, 2023March 30, 2023 by Carolyn Collins Petersen

Plans are Underway to Build a 30 Cubic Kilometer Neutrino Telescope

Underwater neutrino detectors take advantage of location to track these fast particles. This is an artist's impression of a KM3NeT installation in the Mediterranean. Chinese scientists hope to build a bigger underwater "neutrino telescope" in the next few years. Courtesy Edward Berbee/Nikhef.

How do astronomers look for neutrinos? These small, massless particles whiz through the universe at very close to the speed of light. They’ve been studied since the 1950s and detecting them provides work for a range of very interesting observatories.

November 4, 2022November 4, 2022 by Evan Gough

IceCube Senses Neutrinos Streaming From an Active Galaxy 47 Million Light-Years Away

This is a Hubble Space Telescope image of the Messier 77 spiral galaxy. Scientists working with the IceCube Neutrino Observatory detected neutrinos emanating from the galaxy's core. Image Credit: By NASA, ESA & A. van der Hoeven - http://www.spacetelescope.org/news/heic1305/, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=25328266

Researchers using the IceCube Neutrino Observatory have detected neutrinos emanating from the energetic core of an active galaxy millions of light-years away. Neutrinos are difficult to detect, and finding them originating from the galaxy is a significant development. What does the discovery mean?

July 20, 2022July 20, 2022 by Carolyn Collins Petersen

We Finally Know Where the Highest Energy Cosmic Rays are Coming From: Blazars

Way out there in space is a class of objects called blazars. Think of them as extreme particle accelerators, able to marshall energies a million times stronger than the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland. It turns out they’re the culprits in one of the great astrophysical mysteries: what creates and propels neutrinos across the universe at blazingly fast speeds? It turns out that the answer’s been there all along: blazars pump out neutrinos and cosmic rays. That’s the conclusion a group of astronomers led by Dr. Sara Buson of Universität Wurzburg in Germany came to as they studied data from a very unique facility here on Earth: the IceCube Neutrino Observatory in Antarctica.

July 18, 2022July 17, 2022 by Paul M. Sutter

A Mission Concept to fly a Solar Neutrino Detector Close to the Sun

This is one of the new images of the Sun from the ESA's Solar Orbiter's closest approach on March 26th, 2022. Image Credit: ESA

Astronomers have proposed a concept mission to fly a neutrino observatory into orbit around the Sun to get a better picture of what’s happening in the Sun’s core.

November 5, 2021November 5, 2021 by Brian Koberlein

Experiment Finds no Sign of Sterile Neutrinos

Could sterile neutrinos be a fourth kind of neutrino? Credit: IceCube - University of Wisconsin

We don’t know what dark matter is. We do know the characteristics of dark matter, and much of how it behaves, so we know what physical properties dark matter must have, but no known matter has all the necessary characteristics of dark matter. So we’re stumped.

March 9, 2021March 9, 2021 by Andy Tomaswick

Astronomers Track a Neutrino Back to the Source. Where a Black Hole Tore Apart a Star

Neutrinos are notoriously finicky particles. Hundreds of trillions pass through a person’s body every second, yet they hardly seem to interact with anything (though they actually do a lot). Even more hard to find are the “high energy” neutrinos that are believed to be formed as the outcome of some of the most violent events in the universe. Now, researchers using NASA’s Swift telescope have found a high energy neutrino for the first time from one type of those ultra-violent events – a tidal disruption. But something was a little bit off about it.

March 6, 2021March 6, 2021 by Brian Koberlein

Almost all High-Energy Neutrinos Come From Quasars

The IceCube Neutrino Observatory at the South Pole. It detected neutrinos and helped astronomers trace them to blazars. Credit: Emanuel Jacobi/NSF.

Buried under the ice at the South Pole is a neutrino observatory called IceCube. Every now and then IceCube will detect a particularly high-energy neutrino from space. Some of them are so high energy we aren’t entirely sure what causes them. But a new article points to quasars as the culprit.

February 1, 2021February 1, 2021 by Matt Williams

Neutrinos Have a Newly Discovered Method of Interacting With Matter, Opening up Ways to Find Them

SCGSR Awardee Jacob Zettlemoyer, Indiana University Bloomington, led data analysis and worked with ORNL’s Mike Febbraro on coatings, shown under blue light, to shift argon light to visible wavelengths to boost detection. Credit: Rex Tayloe/Indiana University

The neutrino is a confounding little particle that is believed to have played a major role in the evolution of our Universe. They also possess very little mass, have no charge, and interact with other particles only through the weak nuclear force and gravity. As such, finding evidence of their interactions is extremely difficult and requires advanced facilities that are shielded to prevent interference.

One such facility is the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) where an international team of researchers are conducting the COHERENT particle physics experiment. Recently, researchers at COHERENT achieved a major breakthrough when they found the first evidence of a new kind of neutrino interaction, which effectively demonstrates a process known as coherent elastic neutrino-nuclear scattering (CEvNS).

December 2, 2020December 2, 2020 by Brian Koberlein

Neutrinos Have Played a Huge Role in the Evolution of the Universe

Computer simuations show how neutrinos can form cosmic clumps. Credit: Yoshikawa, Kohji, et al

It’s often said that we haven’t yet detected dark matter particles. That isn’t quite true. We haven’t detected the particles that comprise cold dark matter, but we have detected neutrinos. Neutrinos have mass and don’t interact strongly with light, so they are a form of dark matter. While they don’t solve the mystery of dark matter, they do play a role in the shape and evolution of our universe.