Source of mysterious particles discovered

london - It is one of the great mysteries of nature: where do the mysterious neutrinos come from? They are fundamental particles in the universe, but scientists hardly know anything about it. Now scientists have figured out for the first time where such a neutrino has arisen.

Neutrinos are minimal. They have no electrical charge and hardly any mass. Every second many billions of neutrinos fly right through our body and through the earth. They can not be stopped by anything. Even magnetic fields can not bounce away the particles. That also makes it very difficult to catch and study neutrinos. They are therefore also called 'ghost particles'. To detect them, 86 holes of 2.5 kilometers deep have been drilled in the ice of the South Pole. There are 5160 ultra-sensitive sensors in these holes spread over an area of ​​1 square kilometer. If neutrinos leave a trace in the ice, a tiny flash of light can be seen. The sensors are able to absorb that.

Such a flash was measured on 22 September last year. The little neutrino touched the ice with a force of 300 trillion electron volts. That is 45 times the power of the strongest particle accelerator on earth.

Telescopes on earth and in space then measured and counted. It showed that the particle was rushed and hurled through a huge black hole at four billion light-years away. Previously measured particles came from the same source, according to a different study. Both studies are on Thursday in the important scientific journal Science.

Neutrinos can teach scientists something about the way the universe works.

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