Scientists Find Possible Source Of Rare Ghost Particle Detected On Earth

Astronomers may have come closer to solving one of space's biggest mysteries after tracing a ghostly cosmic particle to a distant galaxy nearly 11 billion light-years away, reported CNN.

The distant star-forming galaxy, nicknamed the "Shadow Blaster," is believed to have sent a high-energy neutrino, also known as a ghost particle, toward Earth. Scientists say tracing the particle's origin marks a significant step in understanding the mysterious neutrinos.

Neutrinos are found throughout the universe and are known as ghost particles because they have no electric charge, very little mass and barely interact with other forms of matter.

Supernovae, stellar nuclear reactions and the breakdown of heavy particles can produce neutrinos. However, tracing where they come from after detectors such as Antarctica's IceCube Neutrino Observatory detect them has remained a major challenge for astronomers.

Dr Yuji Urata, a researcher at Taiwan-based astronomical research firm MITOS Science Co. Ltd., said that neutrinos rarely interact with matter, which is why they can travel across the universe almost undisturbed. He added that even when IceCube detects a high-energy neutrino, the position in the sky usually has an uncertainty region much larger than the size of a galaxy.

Scientists say that if the source is an object that does not become brighter or show any flare of activity, identifying the exact origin of a neutrino becomes almost impossible.

However, lead author Urata and his team came across a fortunate discovery, according to their study published on June 17 in the journal Nature Astronomy.

A cosmic coincidence caused the Shadow Blaster galaxy to brighten shortly after a high-energy neutrino was detected on Earth. Researchers believe this burst of activity pointed them to the galaxy and may provide a new way to search for the origins of ghost particles.

In 2021, the IceCube detector, which has sensors buried deep beneath the Antarctic ice, detected a high-energy neutrino, the type scientists observe only once every two to three years. The particle, named IC 210922A, appeared to come from the direction of the Eridanus constellation, prompting the observatory to alert astronomers around the world.

Scientists carried out follow-up observations across different wavelengths of light but were unable to detect any exploding stars, gamma-ray bursts, X-rays or visible light sources linked to the neutrino.

Urata said that neutrinos alone indicate that something energetic happened somewhere in the sky, but they usually do not reveal exactly what the source is, how far away it is or what kind of object produced them. He added that answering those questions requires observations using radio, submillimeter, infrared, optical, X-ray and gamma-ray light.

A few days after the alert was issued, Urata and his colleagues used the East Asian Observatory's James Clerk Maxwell Telescope and the Submillimeter Array, both located near the summit of Mauna Kea in Hawaii. During those observations, they discovered a star-forming galaxy named JCMT0402-0424.