About 1.2 miles below Antarctica, an underground observatory is hunting for "ghost particles." What he finds could reveal the invisible heart of a distant galaxy. About 47 million light-years from where you sit, the center of a galaxy full of black holes called NGC 1068 is spewing streams of mysterious particles. They are neutrinos, otherwise known as the elusive "ghost particles" that haunt our universe while leaving little trace behind. Immediately after they are formed, bundles of these invisible pieces are flung across the expanse of space. They whip through the bright stars we can see and weave around pockets of space teeming with wonders we have yet to discover. They fly and fly and fly until occasionally they reach the South Pole of the Earth and burrow underground. The neutrino path is smooth. But scientists are patiently waiting for it to arrive. In about 1 billion tons of ice, more than 2 kilometers (1.24 miles) below Antarctica, lies the Ice Cube Neutrino Observatory. You could call it a neutrino hunter. And when some neutrinos transport their group to the frigid continent, Ice Cube remains vigilant. In a paper published in the journal Science, the international team behind the ambitious experiment confirmed that they had found evidence of 79 "high-energy neutrino emissions" coming from the vicinity of NGC 1068, opening the door to new – and endlessly fascinating – kinds of physics. Scientists call this "neutrino astronomy". It would be a branch of astronomy that could do what existing fields simply cannot. Before today, physicists had only shown neutrinos coming from the Sun; the atmosphere of our planet; a chemical mechanism called radioactive decay; supernovae; and—thanks to Ice Cube's first breakout in 2017—a blazor, or voracious supermassive black hole-headed straight for Earth. Void called TXS 0506+056. With this new-found source of neutrinos, we are entering a new era in the story of the particle. In fact, according to the research team, it is likely that neutrinos originating from NGC 1068 have up to millions, billions, or perhaps even trillions of times more energy than neutrinos rooted in the Sun or supernovae. Those are jaw-dropping numbers because in general, such spooky bits are so powerful yet evasive that trillions upon trillions of neutrinos pass through your body every second. You just can't say that. And if you wanted to stop a neutrino in its tracks, you'd have to fight it with a block of lead a light-year across—though even then there would be a slim chance of success. Harnessing these particles, NCG 1068 version or not, could allow us to penetrate regions of space that would normally lie out of reach. What now? Not only is this moment massive because it gives us further evidence of a strange particle whose existence wasn't even announced until 1956, but also because neutrinos are like keys to the backstage of our universe. They have the ability to detect phenomena and solve puzzles that we are unable to solve by any other means, which is the main reason why scientists are trying to develop neutrino astronomy. "The universe has several ways to communicate with us," the National Science Foundation and Ice Cube team member told reporters. "Electromagnetic radiation that we see as starlight, gravitational waves that shake the fabric of the universe - and elementary particles such as protons, neutrons, and electrons ejected by localized sources." One of these elementary particles was neutrinos, which permeate the universe, but unfortunately, neutrinos are very difficult to detect. In fact, both the galaxy NGC 1068 and its supermassive black hole are usually shrouded in a thick veil of dust and gas, making them difficult to analyze with standard optical telescopes and instruments—despite years of scientists trying to break through its veil. NASA's James Webb Space Telescope might have a leg up on this one with its infrared eyes, but neutrinos may be an even better way in. Expected to be generated behind such opaque screens filtering our universe, these particles can transmit cosmic information from beyond those. Screens, zoom in to great distances while interacting with essentially no other matter and providing humanity with pristine, pristine information about the elusive recesses of space. In a sense, we are very lucky because we have access to an amazing understanding of this object. It is also notable that there are many (many) more galaxies like NGC 1068 – categorized as Seyfert galaxies – than there are blazers like TXS 0506+056. That means Ice Cube's latest discovery is probably a bigger step forward for neutrino astronomers than the observatory's key one. Perhaps most of the neutrinos diffusing throughout the universe have their roots in the doppelgangers of NGC 1068. But in the grand scheme of things, there is much more to the benefits of neutrinos than just their sources. These ghosts, the University of Wisconsin-Madison astronomer and member of the IceCube team said, are capable of solving two major mysteries in astronomy. First, a large number of galaxies in our universe boast gravitationally monstrous voids at their centers, black holes reaching masses of millions to billions of times that of our Sun. And these black holes, when active, shoot streams of light from their guts that emit enough light to outshine every single star in the galaxy itself. Neutrinos could provide a way to study the regions around black holes. The second is the general but persistent cosmic ray conundrum. We don't even really know where cosmic rays come from, but these chains of particles reach energies up to millions of times higher than what we can achieve here on Earth with man-made particle accelerators like the one at CERN. "We think neutrinos play a role," "Something that may help us answer these two mysteries of black holes powering very bright galaxies and the origin of cosmic rays."
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