First image of Milky Way in neutrinos made by researchers

As a groundbreaking achievement, the IceCube Neutrino Observatory Captured an extraordinary view of the Milky Wayusing elusive, tiny particles known as neutrinos instead of light.

This was the result of a collaborative effort involving more than 350 scientists from around the world, with support from the National Science Foundation and 14 other countries. located at the South Pole, State-of-the-art telescope uses an extraordinary array of more than 5,000 light sensors to detect high-energy neutrinos originates from inside and outside of our galaxy.

The telescope was able to successfully capture neutrinos, which have astonishing energies billions of times greater than those produced by the fusion reactions that power stars.

“What interests us is that unlike light of all wavelengths, The universe actually outperforms nearby sources in our own galaxy when it comes to neutrinos.”, explains Francis Halzen, professor of physics at the University of Wisconsin and principal investigator behind the IceCube initiative.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35YuzuhadOs

The research focused on the southern sky, near the center of our galaxy, where most neutrino emissions from the galactic plane are expected to originate. However, so far, the background noise produced by muons and neutrinos from cosmic ray interactions with Earth’s atmosphere has posed significant challenges.

To overcome these barriers, the brilliant minds collaborating on IceCube with colleagues at Drexel University, Rigorous analytics selectively identifying “cascading” events – neutrino interactions in ice that produce spherical bursts of light.

Contamination from atmospheric muons and neutrinos is significantly reduced as the energy accumulation of successive events begins within the instrumented volume. Ultimately, the greater purity of these successive events provides greater sensitivity to astrophysical neutrinos emanating from the southern sky.

Denise Caldwell, director of NSF’s Physics Division, observes: “As is often the case, Important scientific discoveries owe their existence to advances in technology.. The unparalleled sensitivity of the IceCube detector, combined with state-of-the-art data analysis tools, gave us a completely new perspective on our galaxy that had only been implied in the past.”