The Universe’s Most Elusive Signal Has Arrived

[Snowman]

And It’s More Powerful Than Ever​

by nasaspacenews February 22, 2025 in Astronomy, Astrophysics, Cosmology, News, Others

The Highest-Energy Neutrino Ever Detected: A Groundbreaking Discovery Beneath the Mediterranean Sea​

Imagine capturing a glimpse of a cosmic ghost—something invisible, incredibly elusive, yet powerful enough to hold clues about the deepest mysteries of the universe. That’s exactly what scientists recently accomplished with the KM3NeT neutrino detector, despite the fact that the observatory isn’t even finished yet.

A Cosmic Breakthrough: What Happened?​

On February 13, 2025, the unfinished KM3NeT detector made history. Even though the detector, submerged deep beneath the Mediterranean Sea, was only 10% complete, it managed to spot a neutrino with an extraordinary energy level of 220 petaelectronvolts (PeV)—a measurement so vast that it shattered all previous records. This groundbreaking discovery was reported in the prestigious journal Nature by the KM3NeT Collaboration.

Why Is This Discovery So Special?​

Neutrinos are often referred to as “ghost particles” because they’re incredibly difficult to detect. Trillions of them pass through your body every second without leaving a trace. Unlike other particles, neutrinos have no electric charge and interact only via gravity and the weak nuclear force—making them incredibly elusive. The fact that KM3NeT managed to detect a neutrino with such an exceptionally high energy level is nothing short of a scientific marvel.


This detection marks a significant advancement in neutrino astrophysics, opening new pathways to investigate cosmic events that produce ultra-high-energy particles, such as supermassive black holes, gamma-ray bursts, and blazars.


Neutrinos are the universe’s most mysterious messengers. They’re the second most abundant particles in the cosmos (after photons), yet they’re incredibly difficult to observe because of how weakly they interact with matter.


Neutrinos come in various energy levels, categorized mainly into two groups:

• Atmospheric Neutrinos: Produced by cosmic rays hitting Earth’s atmosphere.
• Cosmogenic Neutrinos: Much rarer and more energetic, these particles originate from high-energy cosmic rays interacting with photons from the cosmic microwave background radiation.

Detecting cosmogenic neutrinos is crucial because they can carry information from some of the most extreme events in the universe. By analyzing these particles, scientists can gain insight into phenomena like black hole collisions and the origins of cosmic rays.


The KM3NeT observatory, though incomplete, managed to achieve the impossible.


Located at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea, the Cubic Kilometre Neutrino Telescope (KM3NeT) was designed to detect elusive neutrinos by capturing the rare interactions they have with matter. When a high-energy neutrino interacts with water molecules, it creates Cherenkov radiation—a faint blue light that occurs when charged particles travel faster than the speed of light in water.

https://nasaspacenews.com/2025/02/t...1cm-radiation-reveals-the-milky-ways-secrets/

 

[Snowman]

James Webb Telescope Reveals a Dazzling Light Show From the Milky Way’s Black Hole​

Unpredictable bursts of light are pulsing from the debris surrounding Sagittarius A*, offering new insights into the mysterious behavior of the most massive object in our galaxy


Ella Jeffries

Staff Contributor
February 21, 2025

An artist's illustration portrays the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way, known as Sagittarius A*. NASA, ESA, CSA, Ralf Crawford (STScI)

The supermassive black hole at the heart of our galaxy, called Sagittarius A*, is more dynamic than previously thought, according to new observations made by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). The infrared observatory has captured a nonstop, chaotic light show of flickers and dramatic flares from the gas and dust captured by the black hole’s enormous gravity.


“It is always bubbling with activity and never seems to reach a steady state,” Farhad Yusef-Zadeh, an astrophysicist at Northwestern University and lead author of the study published Tuesday in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, says in a statement. “We observed the black hole multiple times throughout 2023 and 2024, and we noticed changes in every observation. We saw something different each time, which is really remarkable.”



Sagittarius A*—pronounced “Sagittarius A star” and called Sgr A* for short—is located about 26,000 light-years from Earth. It has long been known for its energetic activity, but JWST’s unique capabilities have allowed scientists to observe it with unprecedented detail. The telescope’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) tracked the black hole for a total of 48 hours over the course of a year, observing five to six large flares per day with smaller sub-flares in between.


“In our data, we saw constantly changing, bubbling brightness,” Yusef-Zadeh says in the statement. “And then boom! A big burst of brightness suddenly popped up. Then, it calmed down again. We couldn’t find a pattern in this activity.”


The new results offer more to how our galaxy’s black hole changes over time, as Tuan Do, an astrophysicist at the University of California, Los Angeles, who was not involved in the study, tells CNN’s Ashley Strickland. “This is what makes observations of the galactic center so exciting, even though we’ve stared at this spot in the sky for decades now.”

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smar...how-from-the-milky-ways-black-hole-180986091/

 

[Snowman]

Flickers and flares: Milky Way's central black hole constantly bubbles with light​

James Webb Space Telescope reveals ongoing, rapid-fire light show​

Date: February 18, 2025 Source: Northwestern University Summary: Astrophysicists have observed our central supermassive black hole. They found the accretion disk is constantly emitting flares without periods of rest. Shorter, faint flares and longer, bright flares appear to be generated by separate processes.

The supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way appears to be having a party -- and it is weird, wild and wonderful.


Using NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), a Northwestern University-led team of astrophysicists has gained the longest, most detailed glimpse yet of the void that lurks in middle of our galaxy.
The swirling disk of gas and dust (or accretion disk) orbiting the central supermassive black hole, called Sagittarius A*, is emitting a constant stream of flares with no periods of rest, the researchers found. While some flares are faint flickers, lasting mere seconds, other flares are blindingly bright eruptions, which spew daily. There also are even fainter flickers that surge for months at a time. The level of activity occurs over a wide range of time -- from short interludes to long stretches.
The new findings could help physicists better understand the fundamental nature of black holes, how they interact with their surrounding environments and the dynamics and evolution of our own galactic home.
The study will be published on Tuesday (Feb. 18) in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/02/250218113650.htm

 

[Snowman]

 

[Tirediron]

And you feel that NASA is capable of telling the truth??

 

[Snowman]

There's 4 Posts above Yours, how many are from NASA...?!?

 

[Jen]

And you feel that NASA is capable of telling the truth??

No, but there are glimpses of truth in what they tell.

 

[Snowman]

Much More then nasa :

The DESI project is an international collaboration of more than 900 researchers from over 70 institutions around the world and is managed by DOE's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab).


With DESI's early data [1], which include survey validation and 20% of the first year of operations, the team, led by University of Utah postdoctoral researcher Ragadeepika Pucha, was able to obtain an unprecedented dataset that includes the spectra of 410,000 galaxies [2], including roughly 115,000 dwarf galaxies -- small, diffuse galaxies containing thousands to several billions of stars and very little gas. This extensive set would allow Pucha and her team to explore the complex interplay between black hole evolution and dwarf galaxy evolution.


While astrophysicists are fairly confident that all massive galaxies, like our Milky Way, host black holes at their centers, the picture becomes unclear as you move toward the low-mass end of the spectrum. Finding black holes is a challenge in itself, but identifying them in dwarf galaxies is even more difficult, owing to their small sizes and the limited ability of our current instruments to resolve the regions close to these objects. An actively feeding black hole, however, is easier to spot.


"When a black hole at the center of a galaxy starts feeding, it unleashes a tremendous amount of energy into its surroundings, transforming into what we call an active galactic nucleus," says Pucha. "This dramatic activity serves as a beacon, allowing us to identify hidden black holes in these small galaxies."

From their search the team identified an astonishing 2500 candidate dwarf galaxies hosting an active galactic nucleus (AGN) -- the largest sample ever discovered. The significantly higher fraction of dwarf galaxies hosting an AGN (2%) relative to previous studies (about 0.5%) is an exciting result and suggests scientists have been missing a substantial number of low-mass, undiscovered black holes.


In a separate search through the DESI data, the team identified 300 intermediate-mass black hole candidates -- the most extensive collection to date. Most black holes are either lightweight (less than 100 times the mass of our Sun) or supermassive (more than one million times the mass of our Sun). The black holes in between the two extremes are poorly understood, but are theorized to be the relics of the very first black holes formed in the early Universe, and the seeds of the supermassive black holes that lie at the center of large galaxies today. Yet they remain elusive, with only around 100-150 intermediate-mass black hole candidates known until now. With the large population discovered by DESI, scientists now have a powerful new dataset to use to study these cosmic enigmas.

"The technological design of DESI was important for this project, particularly its small fiber size, which allowed us to better zoom in on the center of galaxies and identify the subtle signatures of active black holes," says Stephanie Juneau, associate astronomer at NSF NOIRLab and co-author of the paper. "With other fiber spectrographs with larger fibers, more starlight from the galaxy's outskirts comes in and dilutes the signals we're searching for. This explains why we managed to find a higher fraction of active black holes in this work relative to previous efforts."


Typically, black holes found in dwarf galaxies are expected to be within the intermediate-mass regime. But intriguingly, only 70 of the newly discovered intermediate-mass black hole candidates overlap with dwarf AGN candidates. This adds another layer of excitement to the findings and raises questions about black hole formation and evolution within galaxies.


"For example, is there any relationship between the mechanisms of black hole formation and the types of galaxies they inhabit?" Pucha said. "Our wealth of new candidates will help us delve deeper into these mysteries, enriching our understanding of black holes and their pivotal role in galaxy evolution."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/02/250219111416.htm

[The phrase "There are none so blind as those who will not see" is often associated with the Bible, particularly Jeremiah 5:21, which states, "Hear now this, O foolish people, and without understanding; which have eyes, and see not; which have ears, and hear not." This proverb emphasizes the idea that some people choose to ignore the truth they already know.]