Evidence of high-energy neutrinos coming from outside our solar system found

Washington – Within the eternal ice of Antarctica, scientists have observed first proof for high-energy neutrinos coming from cosmic accelerators beyond our own solar system.

Between May 2010 and May 2012 the IceCube detector at the South Pole captured a total of 28 neutrinos with energies greater than 30 teraelectronvolts (TeV).

Two of the neutrinos had an energy of more than 1,000 TeV — that’s more than the kinetic energy of a fly in flight — compressed into a single elementary particle.

Francis Halzen, principal investigator of IceCube and the Hilldale and Gregory Breit Distinguished Professor of Physics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said that this is the first indication of very high-energy neutrinos coming from outside our solar system.

Dr. Markus Ackermann, head of the neutrino astronomy group at DESY in Zeuthen near Berlin, said that the neutrinos that have been detected by IceCube have energies that are millions of times higher than those coming from supernova 1987A.

The study has been published in the scientific journal Science.