In the depths of the ocean, where there’s barely any light, scientists discovered something that probably came from an event so intense it sent a signal to Earth, and there are not many like it on Earth. This thing, formerly known as a neutrino, is called “the ghost particle” due to its volatile and vaporous nature.
This neutrino is different from all others known on Earth
The neutrino is different from any other particle known on Earth – it interacts with and can pass through any kind of matter without having to adapt. These ghost particles arrived on the planet from the far outer space, having almost no mass, but still very resistant, traveling through many types of different environments, including other planets, stars, and even some galaxies.
This particular neutrino caused many discussions in the scientific field for its energetic power, having 30 times more power than the previous “ghost particles” detected. The discovery was made by the KM3NeT Collaboration, a research lab in the Mediterranean Sea, specialized in searching for neutrinos on Earth.
In a press-release statement, study co-author Rosa Coniglione, KM3NeT deputy and spokesperson, shared the excitement over this discovery.
“Neutrinos … are special cosmic messengers, bringing us unique information on the mechanisms involved in the most energetic phenomena and allowing us to explore the farthest reaches of the Universe.”
This special neutrino had the energy of 220 million billion electron volts, being 30,000 times more powerful than the Large Hadron Collider particle accelerator, which is capable of supercharging particles almost to the speed of light. The co-author from the study, Dr. Brad. The co-author from the study, Dr. Brad K. Gibson, suggests that it has more energy in one particle than it needs to light up a nuclear fission reaction.
Where does the ghost particle come from?
This is a question yet to be answered by researchers. The team involved in the discovery believes that it came from outside the Milky Way, but they cannot answer the exact point from which it came right now, which raises other questions about its origin and how energetic something has to be to send this particle to Earth.
Extreme environments like a supermassive black hole, a gamma ray burst, or a supernova burst are not out of the question, since they demand an energy source so big that scientists cannot measure it.
This is not the first neutrino to be detected
This ghost particle is the most energetic scientists have found to date, but it’s not the only one. Neutrinos are difficult to detect because they don’t often interact with their surroundings, but they do interact with ice and water – this being the reason the IceCube Neutrino Observatory at the South Pole has more than 5,000 sensors attached to the Antarctic ice.
Operating since 2011, it has discovered hundreds of neutrinos, but nothing like the one found in the Mediterranean Sea. A couple were traced back to their cosmic source, like originating from the bright core of an active galaxy.
How can the energy of the neutrino be useful in daily life?
Originating from the most energetic cosmic events in the universe that we haven’t seen yet, the neutrino is important because it survives through many cosmic environments, containing untouched data, making it the perfect messenger for studying places where no other particle can escape from.
According to the physics coordinator of the KM3NeT, Aart Heijboer, the energy it contains would be enough to power a LED light for a second. The ghost particle itself it’s not useful on the daily life, but the energy it contains is far more powerful than any other particle on Earth – enough to cross dimensions.