First neutrino image of active galaxy miragenews.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from miragenews.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
“We hope to improve our understanding of neutrino physics, search for signs of dark matter, and . investigate terrestrial effects relating to our atmosphere.”
3 things learned from IceCube s first 10 years nsf.gov - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from nsf.gov Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
W boson spotted in Antarctica
IceCube observatory spots elementary particle needle in a galactic haystack.
The IceCube Observatory in Antarctica. Credit: Erik Beiser / IceCube / NSF
On 6 December 2016, a high-energy particle hurtled from outer space and through an Antarctic ice sheet, where it slammed into an electron at nearly the speed of light. The enormously energetic collision created a completely different particle, which rapidly decayed into a cascade of others.
This event might have gone unnoticed – if a massive matrix of neutrino-detectors hadn’t been sunk into the ice, ready to capture such astrophysical phenomena.
In a paper published in Nature, high-energy astrophysicists at the IceCube Observatory in Antarctica confirm that this 2016 collision provides observational evidence for a theory put forth in 1960, solidifying our understanding of the Standard Model of particle physics.