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Learn More - Follow Us View our Youtube channel View our Facebook page View our Instagram feed View our Twitter feed View our LinkedIn account Search for: [ ] Open the Main Navigation Search Return to homepage Subscribe Hard Science -- March 24, 2023 New neutrino discovery will unlock secrets of the rarest events in the cosmos We are about to learn a lot more about the most elusive of cosmic particles. a star burst in the middle of the night sky. Credit: Naeblys / Adobe Stock Key Takeaways * High-energy neutrinos are extremely rare particles and are very difficult to detect. * High-energy neutrinos from space have been observed before, but their existence is at the whim of cosmic events, like neutron star collisions. * This work will shed light on some of the most spectacular and rarest of cosmic phenomena. Don Lincoln Copy a link to the article entitled http:// New%20neutrino%20discovery%20will%20unlock%20secrets%20of%20the%20rarest%20events%20in%20the%20cosmos Share New neutrino discovery will unlock secrets of the rarest events in the cosmos on Facebook Share New neutrino discovery will unlock secrets of the rarest events in the cosmos on Twitter Share New neutrino discovery will unlock secrets of the rarest events in the cosmos on LinkedIn Researchers at the CERN laboratory in Switzerland announced that they have observed and generated in the laboratory a highly energetic form of radiation called high-energy neutrino radiation. Their accomplishment is without precedent, and it will significantly improve the scientific community's understanding of some of the most energetic and destructive environments in the cosmos. The rarest particles In nature, high-energy neutrinos are created only in exceptional circumstances. These include colliding neutron stars, gamma ray bursts, and pulsars. They also occur in the strong magnetic fields generated when black holes absorb nearby stars. Such cosmic events are among the rarest and most spectacular occurrences in the Universe. Lower-energy neutrino radiation has been observed for over half a century. Low-energy neutrinos emit from nuclear reactions, like those occurring in the Sun or a nuclear reactor. Solar and reactor neutrinos can have less than one-millionth of the energy carried by highly energetic ones created in the cosmos. Scientists can also generate neutrinos using particle beams like the ones at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, or Fermilab, located just outside Chicago. Fermilab's beams are the most intense in the world. They are about 1,000 times more energetic than those created in the Sun or in nuclear reactors, yet they still fall well short of the energy carried by some neutrinos created in space. High-energy neutrinos from space have been detected before, but they are extremely rare, and their detection is at the whim of cosmic events. After all, neutron stars do not collide on just any day. Researchers wanting to study very-high-energy neutrinos are left to wait until a high-energy event occurs somewhere in the Universe. Patience has a cosmic limit Thankfully, scientists are quite patient, and they have built equipment that can identify high-energy cosmic neutrinos when they do occur. Very large detectors are needed for the task -- for example the Super-Kamiokande detector in Japan, which is a tank containing 50,000 tons of ultrapure water, or the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, which uses a cubic kilometer of Antarctic ice. The detectors must be so large because neutrinos interact very weakly. For example, about 10 trillion trillion (10^25) neutrinos from the sun pass through the Super-Kamiokande tank every day, yet only thirty of those neutrinos interact with the detector and can be observed. It is clear, then, that for scientists wanting to study energetic neutrinos, it is not ideal to wait for them to be generated somewhere in space. It would be far better to create very-high-energy neutrinos on Earth, and then point a beam of those neutrinos at a waiting detector. And that is exactly what researchers now have done. The most powerful particle accelerator in the world is called the Large Hadron Collider, and it is located at the CERN laboratory on the French-Swiss border. The Collider was built to bash very-high-energy beams of protons together in hopes of creating, and then detecting, a particle called the Higgs boson, which is the origin of the mass of matter's smallest building blocks. The discovery of the Higgs boson was announced on July 4, 2012. Smarter faster: the Big Think newsletter Subscribe for counterintuitive, surprising, and impactful stories delivered to your inbox every Thursday Notice: JavaScript is required for this content. While the Higgs boson was the Collider's primary objective, the detectors arrayed around the accelerator were designed to be very versatile. Over the years, independent teams used it to make many measurements of the laws of nature at the highest accessible energies. Indeed, since the Collider began operating, more than 3,000 scientific papers have been published using the data generated by the accelerator. High-energy discoveries One set of researchers took advantage of the unprecedented energy of the facility's beams to investigate how to create and detect very-high-energy neutrinos. These scientists built what is called FASER, or ForwArd Search ExpeRiment. A detector was placed very near the LHC beams -- about 480 meters from a location where beams of protons collide. At this location, FASER could see the most energetic particles created in the collisions, making it an ideal detector to search for extremely high-energy neutrinos. At the Moriond 2023 Electroweak Conference in LaThuile, Italy, FASER scientists announced that they had observed these particles. The particles carried as many as a couple thousand times the energy of neutrinos generated using other particle accelerators. Scientists will be able to use this data to better understand high-energy neutrinos from space. This new knowledge will in turn help astronomers gain a much better understanding of exactly what happens, for example, when neutron stars collide. Thus, this recent work will shed light on some of the most spectacular and rarest of cosmic phenomena. This is just the beginning. Since the LHC will continue to run for a couple of decades more -- including a planned upgrade to the rate at which its beams collide -- researchers will continue to uncover and reveal the behavior of very-high-energy neutrinos. Tags particle physicsSpace & Astrophysics In this article particle physicsSpace & Astrophysics --------------------------------------------------------------------- Related the sun is setting over the ocean on a cloudy day. 13.8 How earthquakes helped us map the interior of the Sun Temperatures in the Sun's core exceed 10 million degrees Celsius. But how on Earth did we actually come to know that? [yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7] Starts With A Bang IceCube finds neutrinos from 47 million light-years away IceCube just found an active galaxy in the nearby Universe, 47 million light-years away, through its neutrino emissions: a cosmic first. 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Neuropsych Your brain keeps getting faster until you hit your 30s This is the latest study to confirm that the brain does not fully mature until at least the third decade of life. Footer Subscribe Get counterintuitive, surprising, and impactful stories delivered to your inbox every Thursday. Notice: JavaScript is required for this content. Follow Us View our Youtube channel View our Facebook page View our Instagram feed View our Twitter feed View our LinkedIn account Sections * Neuropsych * Thinking * Leadership * Smart Skills * High Culture * The Past * The Present * The Future * Life * Health * Hard Science * Special Issues Columns * Starts With A Bang * The Well * 13.8 * Strange Maps * The Learning Curve Video * The Big Think Interview * Your Brain on Money * Playlists * Explore the Library About * Our Mission * Work With Us * Contact * Privacy Policy * Terms of Use * Accessibility * Careers Get Big Think for Your Business. 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