Distant Neutrinos Detected Below Antarctic Ice
From where do these neutrinos come?
The
IceCube Neutrino Observatory
near the South Pole of the Earth has begun to detect
nearly invisible particles of very high energy.
Although these rarely-interacting
neutrinos pass through
much of the Earth just before being detected, where they started remains a mystery.
Pictured here
is IceCube's Antarctic lab accompanied by a cartoon depicting
long strands of detectors frozen into the crystal clear ice below.
Candidate origins for these cosmic neutrinos include the violent surroundings of supermassive
black holes at the centers of distant galaxies, and tremendous stellar explosions culminating in
supernovas and
gamma ray bursts far across the universe.
As IceCube detects increasingly more high energy
neutrinos,
correlations with known objects may resolve this cosmic conundrum -- or we may never know.