In 2020, the Nobel Prize for Physics Takaaki Kajita He had warned that neutrinos could reserve surprises. And he was right. Today the scientific community is located in front of an extraordinary discovery: a neutrino with an energy never detected before, equal to 220 million billions of electronvolt (220 pev)a value 20,000 times higher to that achieved by the CERN particles accelerators.
The event was recorded in the Baby of the Mediterraneana 3,450 meters deep off Head of the sparrowin Sicily, thanks to the underwater telescope Km3net. The discovery was published on the prestigious magazine Nature and presented in live streaming fromNational Institute of Nuclear Physics (INFN) of Rome, in collaboration with the French cnrs.
For scientists, this result represents a new way of observing the universeopening the way to research that could deeply change our understanding of the cosmos.
An underwater telescope to observe the most elusive particles of the universe
The super energy neutrin was detected by the detector ARKone of the two sections of the project Km3netan underwater telescope that uses marine water as a detection tool. Thanks to this technology, it is possible to identify cosmic neutrinos, particles that arise from extreme events such as Supernovae explosions or supermassicci black holes.
The Observatory is composed of Over 200 detection stringseach high 700 meterswith 18 ultra-sensible optical modules able to intercept the very weak flashes of cherenkov light products when neutrinos interact with water.
Behind this scientific company there is the work of 360 researcherscoming from 68 institutions in 22 countriesunited by the goal of revealing the mysteries of the most elusive particles of the universe.
Every second, billions of neutrinos cross our body and the entire planet without realizing it. They are everywhere, but their nature makes them extremely difficult to study. After photons, they are the most abundant particles in the universe, yet they remain among the most enigmatic.
For a long time it was believed that they were massless, but in recent years the scientists have shown the opposite. I am without electric chargewhich makes them almost impossible to intercept. The term “Neutrin” He was coined by physicists Enrico Fermi and Edoardo Amaldito describe something even lighter and elusive of the neutron.
The mystery of its origin
The observation of the super energy neutrino took place February 13, 2023but to confirm the data it took us Two years of analysis. The recorded signal was the passage of a mussa particle generated by the interaction of a neutrino, who has crossed the whole detector. The inclination of the trajectory and the out of scale energy indicate that the muone was produced by a Cosmic neutrino near the submarine telescope.
According to researchers, such a high energy is difficult to explain within our galaxy, and this makes the discovery even more fascinating. Studies now focus on which cosmic event could have generated it And from what distance it arrived.
It is not excluded that it comes From outside the Milky Waywhich would make this discovery even more extraordinary. The next observations will be fundamental for understand if there are other similar events and build a clearer picture of this phenomenon.
