The IceCube detector is seen under a starry night sky, with the Milky Way appearing over low auroras in the background. In one 2018 case, scientists were able to use IceCube to trace the origins of a neutrino that traveled 3.7 billion light-years to Earth.īut other interactions between neutrinos and ice just produce “fuzz balls of light,” which makes tracing their path to Earth much more difficult, said Kurahashi Neilson. Some of the light patterns point to specific regions of the sky, which allows astronomers to trace where they originated. To build the detector, workers drilled 86 holes in the ice, each 1.5 miles (2.4 kilometers) deep, and spread a network of 5,160 light sensors over a grid that spans 0.2 cubic mile (1 cubic kilometer).Īs neutrinos interact with the ice, they create faint light patterns that IceCube detects. The observatory can monitor 1 billion tons of the Antarctic ice for neutrino interactions. The IceCube detector, which became operational in 2010, is the largest of its kind. And the highest concentration of ice on Earth can be found in Antarctica.Īn international team of scientists used the IceCube Neutrino Observatory at the National Science Foundation’s Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station in Antarctica to detect neutrinos and trace them back to their origins. Ghost particles are difficult to detect because they don’t often interact with their surroundings, but they do interact with ice. It’s likely that billions of them pass through us each day, and we just don’t feel them. Neutrinos have almost no mass and can travel through the most extreme environments - including stars, planets and entire galaxies - and not change their structure at all. Virgin Galactic has sold 800 tickets to the edge of space. “I remember saying, ‘At this point in human history, we’re the first ones to see our galaxy in anything other than light,’” said study coauthor Naoko Kurahashi Neilson, associate professor of physics at Drexel University, in a statement reflecting on when she and two doctoral students initially saw the image. The research was published Thursday in the journal Science. These tiny, high-energy cosmic particles are often referred to as ghostly because they are extremely vaporous and can pass through any kind of matter without changing. The so-called ghost particles are neutrinos. But this is a new perspective of our galaxy based on particles of matter, rather than energy. Over the years, astronomers have showcased stunning images of the Milky Way through electromagnetic radiation from visible light or radio waves. For the first time, astronomers have assembled a glowing portrait of the Milky Way galaxy using cosmic “ghost particles” detected by a telescope embedded in Antarctica’s ice.
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