Scientists may have found a clue to solving a 100 year mystery of subatomic particles

Subatomic particles were discovered in 1912. They form the building blocks of matter as we know it. It was much later that we realized that these particles- billions of which hit us every day, did so with an energy that far exceeded anything that was previously thought capable. It has been a pertinent question for over a century, what was shooting subatomic particles at such high energy towards the earth?

A large team of physicists reported that one probable object that shot out these particles, popularly called cosmic rays, was a blazar. Blazars are a particular type of galaxy that has supermassive black holes at their centers that rips apart matter into constituent particles and shoot them across the cosmos.

Scientists at the IceCube Neutrino Observatory at the South Pole detected a neutrino that they could trace back to a blazer that is 4 billion light-years away. Other subatomic particles are difficult to trace because they get deflected or scattered due to interactions with the earth’s atmosphere and magnetic field. Neutrinos, on the other hand, do not interact with matter and travel through space in straight line.

The observatory is built into the ice underneath the South Pole. It consists of a 1 cubic kilometer of clear ice surrounded by sensors to detect neutrinos. Whenever one of them hits an atom in the ice, the collision breaks apart the atom and the resulting subatomic particles produce a glow. The computers at the observatory were able to trace the approximate direction of the neutrino to the constellation Orion, around the location of the blazer. Other observatories around the world also picked up the same activity from the same direction.

This definitely gives clues to the century-old mystery of cosmic rays bombarding the earth.