(GIST OF SCIENCE REPORTER) ICECUBE NEUTRINO OBSERVATORY

(GIST OF SCIENCE REPORTER) ICECUBE NEUTRINO OBSERVATORY

(APRIL-2024)

ICECUBE NEUTRINO OBSERVATORY

• The researchers have discovered occurrences in IceCube data from 2011 to 2020 that, with a confidence level of greater than 99.99%, fit the signature of tau (τ) type neutrinos.

Key details

• The IceCube neutrino observatory at the South Pole detects neutrinos, which is one of the subatomic particles. 

• The University of Wisconsin, Madison is the founding institution of the IceCube Collaboration, a global consortium of universities that constructed and maintains it. 

• IceCube is made up of many detectors on the surface and hundreds of sensors buried more than 1.4 km below the ice.

• The primary goal of IceCube, the first gigaton neutrino detector ever constructed, is to see neutrinos from the universe’s most violent astrophysical sources. 

• From their sources to Earth, neutrinos—almost massless particles devoid of any electric charge—can travel with little to no attenuation and no magnetic field deflection.

Neutrinos

• Light particles called neutrinos hardly ever interact with matter. 

• They are referred to as “ghost particles” for this reason.

• There are three different forms of neutrinos: tau, muon, and electron neutrinos. 

• It is estimated that it will take a century for a single neutrino to interact with a sensor in a human-sized neutrino detector. The likelihood of finding neutrinos increases with the detector’s collecting area size.

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Courtesy: Science Reporter