A neutrino with 30 times more energy than any previously seen on earth was discovered by an unfinished observatory at the bottom of the Mediterranean after traveling beyond this galaxy, researchers said Wednesday.

Neutrino is the second most common particle in the universe. Known as ghost particles they have no electric charge, almost no mass and easily pass through most things – like our world or bodies – without anyone noticing.

The most violently explosive events in the universe-to example, for example, a star that goes supernova, two neutron stars who crush each other or the almighty suction of super-massive black hole-creating what is called ultra-high energy neutrinos.

Since these particles interact so little with matter, they easily slide away from the violence that created them and travel in a straight line across the universe.

When they finally arrive on earth, Neutrino acts as “special cosmic messengers” which offers a glimpse in the far -reaching range of cosmos that is otherwise hidden for our opinion, Italian researcher Rosa Coniglione said in a statement.

However, these ghost particles are extremely difficult to detect. One way is to use water.

As the light passes through water, it slows down. This sometimes allows fast particles to switch on the light-while they still do not go faster than the speed of light.

When this happens, it creates a bluish glow called “Cherenkov Light” which can be detected by extremely sensitive sensors.

But to observe this light requires a huge amount of water – at least one cubic kilometer, corresponding to 400,000 Olympic pools.

That is why the cubic kilometer neutrino telescope, or KM3NET, is at the bottom of the Mediterranean.

– think of a ping pong ball –

The European led facility is still under construction and spreads over two places. Its Arca detector, which is interested in astronomy, is almost 3,500 meters (2.2 miles) underwater outside Sicily.

Neutrino-hunting Orca detector is in depth near the French city of Toulon.

Cables hundreds of meters long equipped with photomultiplicators – which amplifies small amounts of light – have been anchored in the seabed nearby. Eventually, 200,000 photomultiplators will arrayas in the abyss.

But the Arca detector worked in just a tenth of what will be its possible power when it discovered something strange on February 13, 2023, according to new research published in the journal Nature.

A muon, which is a heavy electron produced by a neutrino, “crossed the entire detector and induced signals in more than a third of the active sensors”, according to a statement from KM3NET, which combines 350 researchers from institutions in 21 countries.

Neutrino had an estimated energy of 220 petaelelectron volts – or 220 million billion electron volt.

A neutrino with such a huge amount of energy had never been observed before on earth.

“It’s about the energy from a ping pong ball that falls from a meter altitude,” the Dutch physicist and KM3NET researcher Aart Heijboer told a press conference.

“But the great thing is that all this energy is found in a single elementary” particle, he added.

For people to create such a particle would require that they build the equivalent of a large Hadron colider “around the earth at the distance from the geostationary satellites,” says French physicist Paschal Coyle.

– Blazars as a source? –

With this type of energy, the event that created this Neutino must have been beyond a milky path.

The exact distance remains unknown, “but what we are absolutely sure of is that it does not come from our galaxy,” says French physicist Damien Dornic.

Astrophysicians have some theories about what could have caused such a neutrino. Among the suspects are 12 blazers – the incredibly bright cores with galaxies with super -massive black holes.

But more research is needed.

“When this event occurred, our Neutino Alert system was still under development,” Heijboer emphasized.

If another Neutino is discovered near the end of this year, a warning will be sent in seconds to “all telescopes around the world so that they can point in that direction” to try to discover the source, he said.

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