IceCube observatory hidden deep in Antarctic ice captures mysterious neutrinos

What are neutrinos and how to look for them?

According to the IceCube observatory, approximately 100 trillion neutrinos pass through our body every second. These are the lightest and most fundamental particles known, meaning they do not consist of smaller physical building blocks.

We still don’t know exactly how neutrinos are born, but we have some theories about it. Instead, we know that they almost never interact with matter, generally passing freely through it. To study these particles, scientists built a special observatory in Antarctica, hidden under a sheet of ice at a depth of 1,450 to 2,450 meters. Such depth is needed avoid hitting hypersensitive detectors of other cosmic particles (muons, nucleons, gamma quanta and others). A thick layer of ice blocks everything, but not even an entire planet can block the flow of neutrinos.

IceCube consists of long cables connecting more than 5,000 photosensitive devices lowered into deep holes in the ice. They detect rare bursts of blue light that occur when neutrinos interact with molecules in Antarctic ice. The probability that background noise affects the tau neutrino signal is less than one in 3.5 million.

The detection of seven potential tau neutrino events in the observatory’s data, combined with the very small number of expected background events, suggests that: It is unlikely that such background events could have created as many as seven “rogue tau neutrinos.”i.e. wrong detectors.

Scientists claim in their studies that: Measured neutrino flux is consistent with expectationsbased on previously published measurements.

The results of the research will be published in the journal Physical Review Letters and are currently hosted on the arXiv preprints server for peer review. Scientists continue to study neutrinos to understand their role and place in the life of the universe.