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Mar 11, 2021

IceCube Detection of a High-Energy Particle – Antineutrino “Unmistakably of Extraterrestrial Origin”

Posted by in categories: particle physics, space

The South Pole neutrino detector saw a Glashow resonance event, a phenomenon predicted by Nobel laureate physicist Sheldon Glashow in 1960 where an electron antineutrino and an electron interact to produce a W-boson.

On December 62016, a high-energy particle called an electron antineutrino hurtled to Earth from outer space at close to the speed of light carrying 6.3 petaelectronvolts (PeV) of energy. Deep inside the ice sheet at the South Pole, it smashed into an electron and produced a particle that quickly decayed into a shower of secondary particles. The interaction was captured by a massive telescope buried in the Antarctic glacier, the IceCube Neutrino Observatory.

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  1. Very cool! Fermilab 20 years, Texas A&M, etc. This is a great event! Bill