Astronomers believe they have traced the origin of a ghostly cosmic particle to a distant star-forming galaxy nicknamed the ‘Shadow Blaster’, located 11 billion light-years away.

The Discovery

The particle, a high-energy neutrino, was detected by the IceCube Neutrino Observatory in Antarctica in 2021. Neutrinos are abundant across the universe and are known as ‘ghost particles’ because they possess no electric charge, have little mass, and don’t interact with other types of matter.

According to Dr. Yuji Urata, a researcher at Taiwan-based astronomical research firm MITOS Science Co. Ltd, ‘They rarely interact with matter, which is why they can travel across the universe almost undisturbed.’ However, tracing the origin of neutrinos has proven difficult for astronomers due to their elusive nature.

The Breakthrough

The team encountered a stroke of luck when a cosmic coincidence brightened the Shadow Blaster galaxy shortly after the detection of the high-energy neutrino, suggesting a flare of activity that led the researchers to the galaxy. The galaxy is filled with dust, making it nearly invisible in optical light, X-rays, or gamma rays, but it was visible in infrared light.

The discovery was made possible by observations with the East Asian Observatory’s James Clerk Maxwell Telescope and the Submillimeter Array, both located near the summit of Mauna Kea in Hawaii. The team also used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array in Chile to study the galaxy.

The study suggests that star-forming galaxies like the Shadow Blaster could be a key source of high-energy neutrinos, contributing up to 20% of the observed diffuse neutrino background measured by IceCube.

Original reporting: KRDO (Colorado Springs metro) — read the source article.