- 4269 - BLAZERS - and the “OhMyGod” Particle. “Blazars” are supermassive black holes that are feeding at the hearts of active galaxies, blasting out enormous jets of radiation and matter. But unlike “quasars”, the cosmic twin of a blazar, these phenomena are pointed directly at Earth. They could be pelting our planet with neutrinos, otherwise known as "ghost particles."
------------------ 4269 - BLAZERS - and the OhMyGod Particle
- This spooky name
comes from the fact neutrinos are notoriously difficult to detect. They are
chargeless, and have virtually no mass. Around 65 billion neutrinos manage to
stream through every square inch of your body every single second with no
discernible effect.
-
- So unsurprisingly,
neutrinos are considered the "ghosts particles" haunting the particle
zoo. However, their ghost-like nature
also makes them important probes of the universe. This is because neutrinos can
"phase" through obstacles, such as dense dust clouds, that impede
other forms of matter and even light.
-
- Understanding
where exactly neutrinos are coming from in the cosmos is vital. And this new
research brings scientists a step closer to establishing blazars as the source
of the astrophysical ghosts.
-
- Blazars are a
subset of bright, active galactic nuclei (AGNs) or "quasars," which
are bright enough to outshine the combined light of every single star in the
galaxy that houses them. Blazars are only different from standard quasars in
that they keep our planet dead in their sights when emitting material from their cores at
near-light speeds.
-
- The jets emitted
in blazar flare events are composed of high-energy particles known as cosmic
rays that can stretch across many light-years, even extending well beyond the
limits of the galaxies these phenomena are situated within. These jets also
consist of electromagnetic radiation ranging from low-energy radio waves to
extremely high-energy gamma rays.
-
- When cosmic rays
interact with particles of light , or photons , they are believed to create
showers of other neutrinos. Thus, gamma-ray flares from AGNs have long-been the
prime suspect in the hunt for neutrino particles detected in our sky.
-
- The link between
considerably less conspicuous AGN jets and neutrinos was solidified in 2017,
when the IceCube neutrino detector buried deep under the North Pole spotted a
high-energy neutrino event coinciding with the flare of a blazar called TXS
0506+056. They were connected in terms of location and timing.
-
- TXS 0506+056 emerges from a supermassive black hole
powered AGN located around 5.7 billion light-years away from Earth.
-
- The actual
relationship between the blazar flare patterns and the amount of neutrinos
passing through Earth , the neutrino flux , remained shrouded in mystery.
-
- To solve this
puzzle, researchers decided to deeply look at TXS 0506+056 as well as another
144 blazars, contenders gleaned from the Fermi Large Area Telescope Monitored
Source List. This allowed the
scientists to calculate the weekly flux of gamma-rays associated with blazars
and simultaneously plot the light curves of such high-energy events.
-
- The researchers
then developed a "flare duty cycle" that shows the amount of time a
blazer spends in a flare state, and how much energy this flare state accounts
for on blazer light curves.
-
- Blazars with lower
flare duty cycles and energy fractions are more numerous. Their flare duty
cycles and energy fractions represent power law-like distributions This is a
relationship between two quantities, where a change in one quantity results in
a change in the other that is proportional to a power of the change,
independent of the initial size of both quantities correlating strongly with
each other.
-
- Over the years,
scientists have managed to unveil the existence of quite a few intriguing
particles, pushing the entire field of physics forward with each discovery.
There's the "God Particle" for instance, aka the Higgs Boson that
grants all other particles their masses. There's also the "Oh My
God!" particle, an unimaginably energetic cosmic ray.
-
- Now we have a new
particle named the "sun
goddess" particle . This particle
has an energy level one million times greater than what can be generated in
even humanity’s most powerful particle accelerators; it appears to have fallen
to Earth in a shower of other, less energetic particles
-
- Like the "Oh
My God!" particle, these bits come from faraway regions of space and are
known as cosmic rays. This is the most
energetic charged particle ever detected by the Telescope Array experiment.
-
- High-energy cosmic
rays are extremely rare to begin with.
This particle has an energy level not seen in a staggering 30 years of
cosmic ray detections.
-
- The Telescope
Array experiment involves 507 detectors
spread across 270 square mile of the high desert of Millard County, Utah. First spotted by the Telescope Array on May
27, 2021, the “Amaterasu particle”, as it is known, exhibits an energy of 224
exa-electron volts (EeV). For contest, one EeV is equivalent to 10¹⁸ electron
volts. This puts Amaterasu on a similar energy level to the most energetic
cosmic ray ever discovered.
–
- The "Oh My
God!" particle, which was detected in Oct. 1991 by the Fly’s Eye camera in
Dugway Proving Ground had an energy of 320 EeV.
-
- There isn’t an
astrophysical object, or any cosmic event in the direction from which the sun
goddess particle appears to have come from. That's why scientists are pretty
unclear on what led to its creation. One
possibility is the particle has been accelerated by extremely energetic
phenomena, such as a gamma-ray burst or a jet from a feeding supermassive black
hole at the center of active galactic nuclei.
-
- Another
possibility is creation in an exotic scenario such as the decay of super heavy
dark matter.
-
-
December 13, 2023 BLAZERS - and
the OhMyGod Particle 4269
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------- Comments
appreciated and Pass it on to whomever is interested. ---
--- Some reviews are
at: -------------- http://jdetrick.blogspot.com -----
-- email feedback,
corrections, request for copies or Index of all reviews
--- to: ------
jamesdetrick@comcast.net
------ “Jim Detrick” -----------
--------------------- ---
Thursday, December 14, 2023 ---------------------------------
No comments:
Post a Comment