Neutrino Detection leads to a new Picture of the Universe

The IceCube neutrino observatory, a special made telescope buried at the South Pol, has just detected extremely high-energy neutrinos. The elementary particles that originate outside our solar system.

The IceCube Neutrino Observatory at the South Pole. Image © Emanuel Jacobi/NSF.

According to Universetoday: “the discovery of 28 record-breaking neutrinos was announced earlier – with two of the particles — nicknamed Bert and Ernie – drawing particular attention because of the their off-the-chart energy of over 1,000,000,000,000,000 electron volts or 1 peta-electron volt (PeV).”
Alexander Kusenko, a UCLA astroparticle physicist who was not involved in the IceCube collaboration, said:

“This is a landmark discovery — possibly a Nobel Prize in the making. Thanks to the remarkable IceCube facility, where neutrinos are captured in holes drilled 1.5 miles down into the Antarctic glacier, astronomers have a completely new way to scope out the cosmos. It’s both literally and figuratively changing the way we see the universe.

Darren Grant, a University of Alberta physicist, and a member of the IceCube team, said:

“It really is the dawn of a new field.”

Penn State Associate Professor of Physics Tyce DeYoung, the deputy spokesperson of the IceCube Collaboration, said:

“While it is premature to speculate about the precise origin of these neutrinos, their energies are too high to be produced by cosmic rays interacting in the Earth’s atmosphere, strongly suggesting that they are produced by distant accelerators of subatomic particles elsewhere in our galaxy, or even farther away.”

Doug Cowen, also from Penn State, who has worked on IceCube for over a decade, said:

“Scientists have been searching high and low for these super-energetic neutrinos using detectors buried under mountains, submerged in deep lakes and ocean trenches, lofted into the stratosphere by special balloons, and in the deep clear Antarctic ice at the South Pole. To have finally seen them after all these years is immensely gratifying.”