Scientists discover new sources of surprising cosmic neutrinos

UCLA physicists have proposed a groundbreaking new explanation of mysterious high-energy particles detected from distant squid galaxies that have the potential to change our understanding of extreme cosmic environments. The surprising discovery, published in a physical comment letter on April 18, solved a puzzle that puzzled astronomers: why the Galaxy NGC 1068 emits abundant ghost neutrino particles while producing unexpectedly weak gamma rays, a pattern that violates conventional celestial matter models.

Cosmic detective story on the Antarctic ice

Deep in the Antarctic ice, thousands of professional sensors form the Icecube Neutmino Observatory – effectively creating “eyes” that can detect nearly invisible subatomic particles, called neutrinos, that pass through our Earth.

“We have telescopes that use light to see stars, but many astrophysical systems also emit neutrinos,” explains Alexander Kusenko, a professor of physics and astronomy at UCLA and a senior researcher at Kavli IPMU. “To look at neutrinos, we need another type of telescope, which is the telescope we have in Antarctica.”

In NGC 1068, the observation station’s findings are confusingly mismatch between neutrino and gamma-ray signals. Typically, when astrophysicists detect high-energy neutrinos from space, they also observe corresponding strong gamma ray emissions.

Split atoms to make ghosts

The research team, including scientists from UCLA, Osaka University and the University of Tokyo, determined that neutrinos might have been produced through a completely different mechanism than previous theorization.

What is their explanation? The helium nucleus accelerates UV photons and cracks in a powerful jet of black holes in the central galaxy, releasing neutrons, which then decays to the neutrinos without producing strong gamma rays.

“Hydrogen and helium are the two most common elements in space,” said first author Koichiro Yasuda, a UCLA doctoral student. “But hydrogen has only one proton, and if that proton is a photon, it will produce neutrinos and strong gamma rays. But neutrons have an additional way to form neutrinos that do not produce gamma rays. Hence, helium is the most likely origin of neutrinos, we observed from NGC 1068.” ”

Major findings from the study

Compared with traditional explanations, the new model has several advantages:

• It explains why NGC 1068’s neutrino signal significantly outperforms its gamma-ray emissions
• Energy matching observation of the obtained neutrino (1-100 TEV range)
• This model explains the unique energy spectrum seen in neutrinos and gamma rays
• It provides insight into extreme conditions around supermassive black holes
• The results suggest that other similar galaxies may generate neutrinos through this mechanism

“NGC 1068 is just one of many similar galaxies in the universe, and its future neutrino detection will help test our theory and uncover the origins of these mysterious particles,” Osaka Astrophrophysics Yoshiyuki inoue Yoshiyuki Inoue.

Why is this beyond astronomy?

Could the extreme environment around a distant Milky Way super black hole have something to do with our daily lives? According to Kusenko, what seems profound today often becomes the technical basis for tomorrow.

Considering a modest electronic, originally determined a century ago. “When JJ Thompson won the 1906 Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery of electrons, he famously toasted at dinner after the ceremony, saying it was probably the most useless discovery in history,” Kusenko said. “Of course, every smartphone in every electronic device today uses Thompson’s discovery 125 years ago.”

He points to other examples that basic science has led to transformative applications, including how particle physics research creates the foundation for the World Wide Web, and how nuclear magnetic resonance research ultimately produces MRI techniques that are crucial to modern medicine.

Moving towards the future of neutrino launch

The potential impact of this discovery is closer to home. Our own Milky Way also has a supermassive black hole in its center, and similar physical processes may occur.

“We don’t know much about the central extremes near the NGC1068 Galaxy Center,” Kusenko said. “If our scenario is confirmed, it will tell us about the environment near the supermass black hole in the center of the Galaxy.”

“We stand at the beginning of the new neutrino astronomy field, and the mysterious neutrinos of NGC 1068 are one of the puzzles we have to solve along the way,” Kusenko added. “Investing in science will produce something you may not appreciate right now, but something can produce in decades. It’s a long-term investment, private companies are reluctant to invest in the research we are doing. That’s why governments are so important to science funding, and that’s why universities are so important.”

With the continuous development of neutrino astronomy, this discovery may represent only the first of the first insights in the hidden mechanisms that power the most dynamic phenomena in the universe, the basis for future technologies that we almost can’t imagine today.