Cosmic neutrinos: new source discovered

The international experiment Ice Cubelocated in the ice of the South Pole, discovered a new source of cosmic neutrinos. It’s about the galaxy NGC 1068also known as Messier 77, one of the closest to us and most studied in which there is a supermassive black hole.

The Milky Way has different characteristics than the Milky Way TXS 0506 + 56, the first cosmic neutrino source discovered in 2018, which contains a supermassive black hole at its center. The different characteristics of these galaxies made it possible to establish the existence of different types of from cosmic neutrino sources. The study was published in the journal Science.

In 2018, the IceCube telescope discovered the presence of the first neutrino source at a distance of 4 billion light-years from our planet. The particle beams emitted by the black hole were aimed at Earth, making neutrinos and gamma rays easily detectable in a short time. The new galaxy, although closer to us, is oriented so that the central region from which the emissions originate is not directly observable because of the dust. This leads to an absorption of gamma rays and neutrinos to escape.

We peer into the active regions of the galaxy NGC 1068, 47 million light-years away. By observing the neutrinos it emits, we will be able to better understand the extreme processes of particle production and acceleration that take place in the galaxy, which has been impossible until now because other high-energy emissions cannot get out of it. After the excitement in 2018 for the discovery of neutrinos from TXS 0506 + 056, it is even more exciting to find a source that produces a continuous beam of neutrinos that we can see with IceCube.

Gary Hill, physicist at the University of Adelaide in Australia and member of the international IceCube collaboration