Neutrinos from outside our solar system found in Antarctica

Nov. 21 (UPI) -- Astronomers at the IceCube Neutrino Observatory an the South Pole have found 28 highly energetic neutrinos thought to have come from beyond our solar system.

This is could herald a new direction for astrophysics, with astronomers now looking at studying neutrinos rather than light.

Neutrinos are super-light particles that can pass through matter without disturbing it. They can also posses information regarding their origin, which could be a black hole, supernova or other cosmic occurrence.

"This is the first indication of very high-energy neutrinos coming from outside our solar system. It is gratifying to finally see what we have been looking for. This is the dawn of a new age of astronomy," said Professor Francis Halzen, IceCube's principal investigator.

The breakthrough could be used to invent a new kind of telescope based on neutrino detection and could measure and observe cosmic phenomena that have been difficult to detect with conventional telescopes.

More than 5,000 highly sensitive light detectors are suspended from 86 steel cables embedded in a cubic kilometer of ice below the IceCube laboratory. The readings from these sensors are relayed to a computer cluster located at the University of Alberta in Canada.

"Now we have an instrument that can detect astrophysical neutrinos. It's working beautifully, and we expect it to run for another 20 years," said Professor Sullivan, one of the 260 scientists participating in the project.

Billions of neutrinos pass through our bodies every second, and so far scientists have been able to detect low-energy neutrinos from the Sun or supernova explosions in our solar system.

The research will now proceed to calculate the possible source of these neutrinos.

"The universe is transparent to neutrinos. Are they remnants from supernovae, did they emanate from gamma-ray bursts, or where they accelerated from an accreting black hole? We do not have conclusive information about their origin yet," said Tom Gaisser of the University of Delaware.