Science: The first neutrino image of the Milky Way galaxy

Neutrinos are nearly massless particles that pass through solid matter, like planets without running into anything because solid matter is mostly empty space. Because of that, it took years and massive light detectors far underground to finally detect a collision between a neutrino and at atom. The collisions give off a detectable photon or light particle. So, when a photo is obtained using neutrinos as the energy source, that's freaking amazing. Earth Sky discusses this amazing feat of science:
Milky Way shines in new ‘ghost particle’ neutrino image
 
We’ve all seen photos of our Milky Way galaxy as a beautiful band of stars stretching across the night sky. In addition to views of the Milky Way in visible light, astronomers have shown us our home galaxy in other wavelengths of the spectrum, from radio waves to gamma rays. On June 29, 2023, a team of researchers using the IceCube Neutrino Observatory in Antarctica released a new image of the Milky Way … a view never seen until now. It’s the first image of our galaxy in something other than electromagnetic radiation. This image captures the galaxy with neutrinos, or ghost particles.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) supports IceCube, which is located at the Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station in Antarctica.

The bright spots in the image are locations in the Milky Way where the neutrinos are emitted. As it happens, those locations are in places where gamma rays are thought to be the byproducts of collisions between cosmic rays and interstellar gas. Those collisions should theoretically produce neutrinos. Sclafani said:

A neutrino counterpart has now been measured, thus confirming what we know about our galaxy and cosmic ray sources.



Neutrino combined with visible light

By nature, neutrinos are elusive to detect. And, with this in mind, researchers want to know where they come from. Neutrinos rarely interact with the ice beneath IceCube in Antarctica, but when they do, they produce faint patterns of light. Some of them point to specific areas of the sky. So, by following the path they took, astronomers can tell where they originated from. For example, in 2022, IceCube detected neutrinos that came from a galaxy 47 million light-years away.

Other patterns, however, are less clear. They are less directional and tend to produce what the astronomers call “fuzz balls of light.” Overall, IceCube has detected over 60,000 of these cascading “fuzz balls” in the past 10 years. That’s 30 times as many as in a previous analysis of the galactic plane using cascade events.


By Germaine: Science person & fuzz ball of light 

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