IceCube detects neutrinos with energy 10 billion times higher than solar neutrinos — ScienceDaily

The IceCube Observatory in Antarctic ice records cosmic neutrinos whose energy is approximately 10 billion times greater than that of typical neutrinos from the Sun, ScienceDaily reports. The origin of these rare particles and the processes that give them such high energy remain insufficiently understood.

Detectors in Antarctic ice

Neutrinos interact with matter only very weakly, so they can pass through the Earth and the human body virtually unhindered. In rare cases, they interact with matter in the ice and produce charged particles. IceCube detectors record brief flashes of blue light known as Cherenkov radiation.

The observatory is embedded in approximately one cubic kilometer of Antarctic ice. To create it, scientists drilled deep boreholes and lowered long strings of photomultiplier tubes, sensitive light detectors, into them. Based on the characteristics of the recorded light signals, researchers estimate a neutrino's energy and reconstruct the direction from which it arrived.

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Carriers of information about extreme space

Unlike the numerous low-energy neutrinos from the Sun, the highest-energy cosmic neutrinos occur very rarely. IceCube records only a few dozen of the most energetic such particles each year. Physicist George Fuller of the University of California, San Diego, noted that a neutrino detected by a similar experiment had energy another 200 times higher, and its origin is unknown.

Because of their weak interaction with matter, neutrinos can leave environments near collapsing stars and black holes from which other types of radiation may not escape. This makes them important carriers of information about distant and extreme processes in the Universe.

Neutrinos are elementary particles and exist in three types: electron neutrinos, muon neutrinos, and tau neutrinos. They have no electric charge, and their mass is extremely small. The exact masses of these particles and the mechanism of their formation have not yet been established.