An Antarctic Neutrino Telescope Has Detected A Signal From The Heart Of A Nearby ActiveGalaxy

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

An enormous neutrino observatory buried deep in the Antarctic ice has discovered only the second extra-galactic source of the elusive particles ever found.

In results published today in Science, the IceCube collaboration reports the detection of neutrinos from an active galaxy" called NGC 1068, which lies some 47 million light-years from Earth.

Neutrinos are very shy fundamental particles that don't often interact with anything else. When they were first detected in the 1950s, physicists soon realized they would in some ways be ideal for astronomy.

Because neutrinos so rarely have anything to do with other particles, they can travel unimpeded across the universe. However, their shyness also makes them difficult to detect. To catch enough to be useful, you need a very big detector.

That's where IceCube comes in. Over the course of seven summers from 2005 to 2011, scientists at America's Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station bored 86 holes in the ice with a hot-water drill. Each hole is almost 2.5 kilometers deep, about 60 centimeters wide, and contains 60 basketball-sized light detectors attached to a long stretch of cable.

How does this help us detect neutrinos? Occasionally, a neutrino will bump into a proton or neutron in the ice near a detector. The collision produces a much heavier particle called a muon, travelling so fast it emits a blue glow, which the light detectors can pick up.

Read more of this story at SoylentNews.