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High-energy neutrinos, once considered to have originated outside our galaxy, were detected by the IceCube Neutrino Observatory in the Antarctic, and their analysis has revealed exciting “new physics” that goes beyond the mainstream model.
As difficult as they are to detect, neutrinos are likely ubiquitous throughout the cosmos. Salah Eddine Ennadifi, a Moroccan astrophysicist, and his colleague recently released a research in EPJ Plus describing the first observation of intergalactic, high-energy neutrinos and investigating novel neutrino-related phenomena outside the Standard Model of Particle Physics.
Neutrinos are mysterious because to their similarities to electrons but dissimilarities in that they have no charge and either no mass or a very small mass. Several celestial entities have been hypothesized as neutrino sources, but only two have been investigated: the Sun and a single supernova.
Rare neutrino interactions are only detectable in large quantities of transparent material, as water or ice. The neutrino detector IceCube is made up of a cubic kilometer of transparent, stable, and pure ice located near the South Pole.
Ennadifi, together with his colleagues at Mohammed V University in Rabat, Morocco, took part in the international IceCube Collaboration. This paper by Ennadifi and colleagues details the detection of a high-energy neutrino by the IceCube telescope and its association with a blazar (a quasar with a relativistic jet). Scientists calculate that the associated blazar is around 4 billion light-years away and has an energy of about 300 TeV. (300 trillion electron volts). A “really astrophysical neutrino,” if confirmed, would fulfill these requirements.
Although high-energy neutrinos like this one are extremely rare, they can be utilized to probe claimed “new physics” beyond the Standard Model. Its mass was determined by physicists since the Standard Model only includes massless neutrinos. They draw the conclusion that high-energy neutrinos from cosmic sources will most certainly yield more “surprising” revelations, necessitating further adjustments to our current understanding of the forces of the universe.