This is more
about the IceCube monitoring station in the Antarctic than the search for the
origins of cosmic rays. They have
generated a handful of high energy neutrinos which is a far cry from the number
needed to resolve the types of questions been asked.
We need to
rethink the whole problem of neutrino detection. It will apparently hold photonic energy and
that may be the way to make these phenomena detectable. I am thinking in terms of a crystal contained
photonic construct that is tuned to interact with neutrino held photons. In this instance we are attempting to imagine
using the photons to capture external photons linked to neutrinos.
I do think we
have to go there because the mass traps
we are now using simply cannot have the resolution.
Scientists Are
Closer Than Ever To Solving A 100-Year-Old Mystery About Cosmic Rays
NOV. 21, 2013,
IceCube
Collaboration
This is the highest energy neutrino, with an
estimate energy of 1.14 petaelectonvolts. It was detected by the IceCube
Neutrino Observatory at the South Pile on Jan 3., 2012. Scientists named it
Ernie.
Scientists using a telescope buried under the
Antarctic ice sheet have found the first sign of high-energy neutrinos that
come from outside the solar system. The discovery is a huge step to finding the
source of cosmic rays — high-energy particles that speed through space and
appear to come at Earth from all directions.
The origin of cosmic rays, and what could be
accelerating the particles in them, has been a mystery since their discovery
more than 100 years ago. That's partly because cosmic rays are electrically
charged, and as a result, the particles get deflected from their original track
as they interact with the magnetic fields in space. The particles travel
across the galaxy in looping paths that make it nearly impossible for detectors
on Earth to trace where cosmic rays come from.
The IceCube Laboratory at the Amundsen-Scott South
Pole Station in Antarctica is the world's largest neutrino detector.
But neutrinos are different. A neutrino is one of
the fundamental particles that make up the universe. The nearly massless
particle has no electric charge, and is therefore not affected by magnetic
fields.
Neutrinos are everywhere — zipping through our
bodies and entire planets right now — maintaining their speed and direction as
they strike Earth at the speed of light. Once neutrinos get here, they are
still tough to detect because they interact weakly with other particles. But if
observed and confirmed, the particles can act as pointers to the place where
they originated since they move in a straight line.
Previously, scientists have observed low-energy
neutrinos that originate in Earth's own atmosphere. The IceCube Neutrino
Observatory was designed to look for high-energy neutrinos — those that come
from the outer reaches of our galaxy and beyond. Detecting these neutrinos
would be the first solid evidence of neutrinos coming from cosmic sources, like
exploding stars, gamma rays bursts, or black holes, that are millions, or even
billions of light years from Earth.
The IceCube detector looks for light when neutrinos
strike the ice and collide with other charged particles.
IceCube has been scanning for high-energy neutrinos
since 2010, using thousands of sensors placed inside a cubic kilometer block
of ice located a mile below the surface. As neutrinos pass through and
collide with atoms inside the ice, they sometimes give off other charged
particles.
The charged particles will give off light as they
travel through the ice. The telescope detects this light.
Most neutrinos that IceCube detects come from the
Earth's atmosphere and are not of interest to scientists studying cosmic rays.
But in the summer of 2012, team members reported two neutrinos with energies
above what would be expected if they came from the atmosphere.
Looking back through their records, scientists found
26 more super-energetic neutrinos, including the most energetic neutrinos ever
observed.
These particles have the characteristics that
scientists predict of neutrinos that come from extraterrestrial sources.
The new research still doesn't solve the riddle of
where cosmic rays come from — more observations are needed to trace the
high-energy events back to any one location, Gregory Sullivan, a physics
professor who led a team of researchers from the University of Maryland, said
in a statement.
But the finding proves that IceCube has the ability
to see these high-energy events, and this sensitivity will improve as new and
better neutrino detectors are put to work. "The era of neutrino astronomy
has begun," Sullivan said.
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