A single subatomic particle detected at the South Pole last September is helping to solve a major cosmic mystery: what creates electrically charged cosmic rays, the most energetic particles in nature.
Follow-up studies by more than a dozen observatories suggest that researchers have, for the first time, identified a distant galaxy as a source of high-energy neutrinos
This discovery could, in turn, help scientists pin down the still mysterious source of protons and atomic nuclei that arrive to Earth from outer space, collectively called cosmic rays. The same mechanisms that produce cosmic rays should also make high-energy neutrinos.
Multiple teams of researchers from around the world describe the neutrino's source in at least seven papers released on 12 July.
“Everything points to this as the ultra-bright, energetic source — a gorgeous source,” says Elisa Resconi, an astroparticle physicist at the Technical University of Munich in Germany.
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