Scientists capture mysterious 'ghost particle' in a giant ice cube...changes how we see the universe

The so-called "ghost particle" was trapped by researchers in a giant ice cube at the South Pole.

It's actually a high-energy neutrino, and is the first of its type ever detected by scientists.

Importantly, researchers believe they've tracked its likely source: a supermassive black hole that emits light and cosmic rays.

The black hole is roughly four billion light years away, at the centre of a completely different galaxy.

The discovery, reported in the journal Science, solves a major scientific riddle.

The particle was captured deep in ice at the South Pole

Part of the problem with these "ghost particles" is that they're in no short supply, but we've never really understood them.

They shoot around the universe at the speed of light, having almost no mass, and passing through almost anything.

They're so common that around 65million of these particles pass through every square centimetre of your body each second.

The fact that they pass through matter so easily makes them difficult to track, and very tricky to actually capture.

Ghost Particles – why are they so mysterious?

Here's what you need to know...

Ghost particles are high-energy neutrinos, a type of tiny particle
They have no electric charge, and nearly zero mass
That makes them difficult to track, because they rarely interact with their surroundings
They simply pass straight through objects – including entire planets
Millions of these particles will pass through your body every single second
They were first discovered back in 1912 by physicist Victor Hess, as part of cosmic rays
But their exact nature has remained mysterious, because they're so tricky to capture, and thus to study
Neutrinos are sometimes called the "third messenger", after light protons and gravitational waves
These messengers allow energy to be carried across the universe

But scientists were able to snatch one, and then identify its source – because the particle will have travelled in a completely straight line from its origin to Earth.
"Neutrinos rarely interact with matter," said Professor Paul O'Brien, a member of the international team of astronomers from the University of Leicester.
"To detect them at all from the cosmos is amazing, but to have a possible source identified is a triumph.
"This result will allow us to study the most distant, powerful energy sources in the universe in a completely new way."

The 'IceCube' trap uses 5,106 sensors to track flashes of light given off by neutrinos interacting with atomic nuclei in the ice water

Astronomers first set up their giant neutrino trap – called 'IceCube' – seven years ago, around a giant ice cube sunk a mile beneath the South Pole.
Then, on September 22 last year, researchers were able to detect a neutrino's presence in the chilly 'IceCube' trap.
A grid of more than 5,000 super-sensitive sensors picked up blue "Cherenkov" light that was emitted as the neutrino interacted with the ice.
Scientists had previously spotted 81 such flashes without finding the associated neutrinos.
But then, finally, luck was on the science's side when it came to tracking the particle's origin.
A telescope orbiting Earth picked up a burst of radiation coming from the same direction as the neutrino.
This radiation was burst was a blazar, a special type of galaxy that contains a supermassive black hole.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yk0Is8-gGSQ

Klaatu- Little Neutrino
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yk0Is8-gGSQ
Lyrics

Across your open mind
I trace erratic lines
In motion and in time
I fought a battle won
To the surface of the sun
Through fires on and on
It’s only you
It can’t be me
For I myself refuse to be
I am someone you’ll never know
I am the little neutrino
Solus is not far away
It’s face is brighter than a day
So don’t turn me away
It’s only you
It can’t be me
For I myself refuse to be
I am someone you’ll never know
I am the little neutrino
And now I’m passing through
The one who’s known as you
And yet you’ll never know I do
“Good-night”

Songwriters: Dee(david) Long
Little Neutrino lyrics © Peermusic Publishing

“A neutrino is a fermion (an elementary particle with half-integer spin) that interacts only via the weak subatomic force and gravity.[2][3]

The mass of the neutrino is much smaller than that of the other known elementary particles.[1]

Although only differences of squares of the three mass values are known as of 2016,[4] cosmological observations imply that the sum of the three masses must be less than one millionth that of the electron.[1][5]

The neutrino is so named because it is electrically neutral and because its rest mass is so small (-ino) that it was long thought to be zero.

The weak force has a very short range, gravity is extremely weak on the subatomic scale, and neutrinos, as leptons, do not participate in the strong interaction. Thus, neutrinos typically pass through normal matter unimpeded and undetected.[2][3]

Weak interactions create neutrinos in one of three leptonic flavors: electron neutrinos, muon neutrinos, or tau neutrinos, in association with the corresponding charged lepton.[6] Although neutrinos were long believed to be massless, it is now known that there are three discrete neutrino masses with different tiny values, but they do not correspond uniquely to the three flavors.

A neutrino created with a specific flavor is in an associated specific quantum superposition of all three mass states. As a result, neutrinos oscillate between different flavors in flight.

For example, an electron neutrino produced in a beta decay reaction may interact in a distant detector as a muon or tau neutrino.[7][8]

For each neutrino, there also exists a corresponding antiparticle, called an antineutrino, which also has half-integer spin and no electric charge.

They are distinguished from the neutrinos by having opposite signs of lepton number and chirality.

To conserve total lepton number, in nuclear beta decay, electron neutrinos appear together with only positrons (anti-electrons) or electron-antineutrinos, and electron antineutrinos with electrons or electron neutrinos.[9][10]

Neutrinos are created by various radioactive decays, including in beta decay of atomic nuclei or hadrons, nuclear reactions such as those that take place in the core of a star or artificially in nuclear reactors, nuclear bombs or particle accelerators, during a supernova, in the spin-down of a neutron star, or when accelerated particle beams or cosmic rays strike atoms.

The majority of neutrinos in the vicinity of the Earth are from nuclear reactions in the Sun. In the vicinity of the Earth, about 65 billion (6.5×1010) solar neutrinos per second pass through every square centimeter perpendicular to the direction of the Sun.[11][12]

For study, neutrinos can be created artificially with nuclear reactors and particle accelerators.

There is intense research activity involving neutrinos, with goals that include the determination of the three neutrino mass values, the measurement of the degree of CP violation in the leptonic sector (leading to leptogenesis); and searches for evidence of physics beyond the Standard Model of particle physics, such as neutrinoless double beta decay, which would be evidence for violation of lepton number conservation.

Neutrinos can also be used for tomography of the interior of the earth.[13][14]”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutrino

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It will let researchers study distant energy sources across the universe in "a completely new way"

The particle was captured deep in ice at the South Pole

Ghost Particles – why are they so mysterious?

The 'IceCube' trap uses 5,106 sensors to track flashes of light given off by neutrinos interacting with atomic nuclei in the ice water