IceCube of the 21st Century Confirms Neutrino #neutrino #space #astronomy - http://clapway.com/2015/08/24/icecube-neutrino130/

Recently, new data figuratively unearthed from the physical Earth’s most ice-laden continent, Antarctica, brought more verification for a neutrino sighting that occurred not so long ago. This is significant because it marks a new kind of astronomy that studies the universe indirectly by means of neutrinos.

WHAT IS A NEUTRINO, AND WHAT DOES IT DO?

Neutrinos are massless high-energy subatomic particles generated by radioactive decay in black holes, large exploding stars, e.g. supernovas, and the unimaginably bright and high-energy cores of galaxies, or, as the late physicist F. Reines would say, neutrinos are “the most tiny quantity of reality ever imagined by a human being.” The recent study detected 21 ultra-high-energy muons, which are secondary particles generated when neutrinos mock chance by interacting with other particles around them. Their presence is direct confirmation of astrophysical neutrinos from cosmic neighborhoods both familiar, and far, far away.

Known as the IceCube Collaboration, the scientific team hailed this new data as an “unequivocal signal” for astrophysical neutrinos, whose histories, having met stars, planets, galaxies, magnetic fields, and clouds of interstellar dust, limn the universe by their compound effect on the more malleable proton particles that’ve tread cross their path.

WHY ARE NEUTRINOS NEWS, IF THEY’RE SO UBIQUITOUS?

If these high-energy neutrinos are created deep within the bowels of the cosmos’ most violent and active phenomena, and are excited to energy levels surpassing even our own record-holding Large Hadron Collider by a factor exceeding one million, the information such particles may hold would be absolutely indispensable to scientists. Recent observation of these particles was carried out with thousands of optical sensors resting in the murky abyssal depths beneath the Antarctic ice of the South Pole. But they sensors were actually pointed, down, through the Earth to monitor the Northern Hemisphere’s sky.

WHY ARE WE LOOKING AT THE GROUND TO SEE SPACE? WHAT?

The Earth’s body actually filters out a good deal of background muons generated upon cosmic rays’ impact with our atmosphere. By amassing instruments amidst a cubic kilometer of Antarctic ice, the IceCube team of scientists were able to make a detector covering a great enough volume to capture a neutrino collision’s rare signature. When this occurs, a muon is created, leaving a trail of Cherenkov light that accurately traces the trajectory of the passed neutrino. Called “optical sonic booms,” these collisions are sensed by optical sensors that compose the IceCube detector array, and can theoretically reveal the source of the neutrino.

MAPPING THE UNIVERSE

Neutrinos observed from the IceCube Observatory showed identical scans to those seen while the observatory captured neutrinos from the Southern Hemisphere. Albrecht Karle from UW-Madison thinks that this suggests that many of the potential sources for high-energy neutrinos have origins beyond the Milky Way. He added that if there are a significant number of sources in our own galaxy, the IceCube detector would register more activity when scanning across the plane of our galaxy.

“The plane of the galaxy is where the stars are. It is where cosmic rays are accelerated, so you would expect to see more sources there. But the highest-energy neutrinos we’ve observed come from random directions,” added Karle. “It is sound confirmation that discovery of cosmic neutrinos from beyond our galaxy is real.”

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The neutrino sighting has gotten us all excited about space! Get your kids excited too with Space Scouts:

IceCube of the 21st Century Confirms Neutrino

%The University of Wisconsin-Madison has new evidence supporting the 2013 impressions that #neutrino particles discovered in Antarctica have #cosmic origins.% - http://clapway.com/2015/08/22/neutrino-in-antarctica-099/

The Neutrino from 2013

It was the middle of May in 2013 when scientists in Antarctica first detected what seemed to be cosmic neutrino, according to the 2013 news release from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The visual of what was detected can be seen here in this short clip.

The discussion at the time focused on the fact that the neutrinos detected were not from the Earth’s atmosphere but might have origins in space. But at the time, it was too early to say where the neutrinos originated.

However, recent news from the University of Wisconsin-Madison have gathered some new new evidence. The new evidence is said to be supportive of the 2013 impressions that the neutrino discovered in Antarctica have cosmic origins.

TODAY’S FINDINGS

The findings of the study of the evidence can be found in its published form in the journal Physical Review Letters. All the information was gathered by the Ice Cube Observatory.

The detection of the neutrino both has been and still is something of a miracle because they are exceedingly difficult to detect. Even when detected, there are a variety of neutrinos to sort through, making the search for a specific kind of neutrino a very meticulous and unforgiving endeavor.

WHY THE FINDING IS IMPORTANT

This is significant because of what the neutrino can tell us about the universe by analyzing the time it took to travel to Earth. Ice Cube helped further this enterprise by detecting the rare neutrino collision that signifies the existence and activity of those elusive neutrinos.

The detection method is paving new roads for particle physics as we know it. However there is much more to be learned about the neutrino detected by Ice Cube Observatory.

Some neutrinos are estimated to have been generated outside the Milky Way galaxy. In fact, thus far, the registered origins of these neutrinos have been exceedingly random. Yet, nevertheless, this doesn’t dampen the fact that scientists have discovered and confirmed the presence of cosmic neutrinos from outside our galaxy. And that’s a good thing.

Only more research can tell us what we will find next about the discovery. So follow the Ice Cube Observatory for more updates in the future.

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YOU MAY NOT CATCH NEUTRINOS, BUT YOU CAN CATCH YOUR VERY BEST MOMENTS WITH FILIMIN

Cosmic Neutrino Detected in Antarctica

Fermilab Uses (Figurative) Railgun to Study Neutrinos - http://clapway.com/2015/08/09/fermilab-uses-figurative-railgun-to-study-neutrinos-101/

Recently, scientists found the first evidence of oscillating neutrinos, and have come to believe that they’re getting very close to understanding these bizarre particles, thanks to Fermilab.

FERMILAB LAUNCHES NEUTRINOS FARTHER

This scientific advancement is the result of Fermilab’s ongoing NOvA experiment, which hopes to uncover the secrets of those elusive particles called neutrinos. The study released its final results earlier this week. The experiment’s gigantic particle detector is capable of detecting neutrinos fired from an impressive 500 miles’ distance, but the scientists are having a hard time forming significant conclusions from this recent success. It’s incumbent for these quantum physicists to progress their theories because to understand which neutrinos are heavier or lighter will help us construct theories about how these particles accumulate mass.

“People are ecstatic to see our first observation of neutrino oscillations,” announced NOvA co-spokesperson Peter Shanahan of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. “For all the people who worked over the course of a decade on the designing, building, commissioning and operating this experiment, it’s beyond gratifying.”

FERMILAB’S EXPERIMENTAL PROCEDURE

In order to detect these far-flung neutrinos, Fermilab’s neutrino beam uses an underground detector capable of measuring the neutrino composition of each shot. After being fired, the neutrinos oscillate 500 miles through the Earth’s crust. When one of the neutrinos collides with one of the atoms in the detector, a signature trail of particles and light is released which is used to identify the neutrino as an electron, muon or tau. Most neutrinos shot out of Fermilab are composed of muons, but because of this experimental method, scientists can actually infer how many are transform in transit from muon to electron.

PRELIMINARY FINDINGS

If the oscillations mentioned to occur in transit did not occur in neutrinos’ 500 mile transit, the roughly 201 neutrinos would arrive in NOvA scat-free, however, because of said oscillations’ effect, a mere 33 were confirmed to have made it. This means that many of the neutrinos’ vanishing act was actually a result of their turning into one of the other forms of neutrinos that went unnoticed. This experiment has been performed before in the T2K in Japan and MINOS at Fermilab, but NOvA is capable of performing the same process in a much shorter period of time.

“One of the reasons we’ve made such excellent progress is the impressive Fermilab neutrino beam and accelerator team,” credited Mark Messier, the NOvA co-spokesperson of Indiana University. “Having a beam of that power running so efficiently gives us a real competitive edge and allows us to gather data quickly.”

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Fermilab Uses (Figurative) Railgun to Study Neutrinos