High-Energy 'Ghost Particle' Traced to Distant Galaxy in Astronomy Breakthrough
July 12, 2018
Segev BenZvi, assistant professor of Physics, is a member of the IceCube team, which announced a breakthrough discovery in astronomy.
Astronomers have traced a high-energy neutrino to its cosmic source for the first time ever, solving a century-old mystery in the process. Observations by the IceCube Neutrino Observatory at the South Pole and a host of other instruments allowed researchers to track one cosmic neutrino to a distant blazar, a huge elliptical galaxy with a fast-spinning supermassive black hole at its heart.
And there's more. Cosmic neutrinos go hand in hand with cosmic rays, highly energetic charged particles that slam into our planet continuously. So, the new find pegs blazars as accelerators of at least some of the fastest-moving cosmic rays as well.