Telescope Beneath South Pole Detects High-Energy Neutrinos

A new neutrino telescope located nearly a mile beneath the South Pole has detected high-energy neutrinos created when cosmic rays crash into the Earth’s atmosphere, establishing that the detection principle works, an international team reports in today’s Nature. The AMANDA telescope is designed to capture the invisible, uncharged, nearly massless particles emitted from such sources as colliding black holes, gamma-ray bursters and the violent cores of distant galaxies. Because neutrinos can travel very long distances, studying them can tell scientists about the farthest reaches of the universe. “‘We have proven the technique,” said physicist Francis Halzen of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “The neutrinos we’ve seen are of a higher energy than has ever been seen before.”

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Compiled by Times medical writer Thomas H. Maugh II