Space and astronomy news
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?
Continue reading “IceCube Senses Neutrinos Streaming From an Active Galaxy 47 Million Light-Years Away”
Is there anywhere in the Universe where we can escape from radiation? Certainly not here on Earth. And not in space itself, which is filled with diffuse radiation in the form of gamma rays and neutrinos. Scientists have struggled to explain where all those gamma rays and neutrinos come from. A trio of researchers is proposing a source for all that radiation in a new paper: resting black holes.
Continue reading “Even the Quiet Supermassive Black Holes are Blasting out Neutrinos and Gamma Rays”
Dark matter remains one of the greatest mysteries in science. Despite decades of astronomical evidence for its existence, no one has yet been able to find any sign of it closer to home. There have been dozens of efforts to do so, and one of the most prominent just hit a milestone – the release and analysis of 8 years of data. The IceCube Neutrino Observatory will soon be releasing results from those 8 years, but for now let’s dive in to what exactly they are looking for.
Continue reading “Searching for Dark Matter Inside the Earth”
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.
Continue reading “Astronomers Track a Neutrino Back to the Source. Where a Black Hole Tore Apart a Star”
We don’t know what dark matter is. We do know what it isn’t, and that’s a problem. Matter is made of elementary particles, from the quarks and electrons that make up atoms and molecules, to primordial neutrinos spread throughout the cosmos. But none of the known elementary particles can comprise dark matter, so what is it?
Continue reading “If Dark Matter is Made of Sterile Neutrinos, a new Survey has Narrowed Down What to Look for”
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).
Continue reading “Neutrinos Have a Newly Discovered Method of Interacting With Matter, Opening up Ways to Find Them”
When giant stars die in impressive supernova blasts, about 99% of the energy released goes into producing a flood of neutrinos. These tiny, ghostly particles slip through tons of matter like it’s not even there. But a new generation of detectors will be able to catch them, telling us of the inner machinations of the deaths of stars.
Continue reading “Astronomers are ready and waiting to detect the neutrino blast from a nearby supernova explosion like Betelgeuse”
Neutrinos are puzzling things. They’re tiny particles, almost massless, with no electrical charge. They’re notoriously difficult to detect, too, and scientists have gone to great lengths to detect them. The IceCube Neutrino Observatory, for instance, tries to detect neutrinos with strings of detectors buried down to a depth of 2450 meters (8000 ft.) in the dark Antarctic ice.
How’s that for commitment.
Continue reading “Detecting the Neutrinos From a Supernova That’s About to Explode”
Neutrinos are mysterious and elusive particles. They have a tiny mass, no electric charge, and they interact with other matter only rarely. They are also extremely common. At any moment, about 100 billion neutrinos are streaming through every square centimeter of your body. Neutrinos were produced by the big bang, and are still being produced by everything from stars to supernovae.
Continue reading “High Energy Neutrinos Are Coming From Supermassive Black Holes”
The universe is filled with matter, and we don’t know why. We know how matter was created, and can even create matter in the lab, but there’s a catch. Every time we create matter in particle accelerators, we get an equal amount of antimatter. This is perfectly fine for the lab, but if the big bang created equal amounts of matter and antimatter, the two would have destroyed each other early on, leaving a cosmic sea of photons and no matter. If you are reading this, that clearly didn’t happen.
Continue reading “Why was there more matter than antimatter in the Universe? Neutrinos might give us the answer”