A new study has revealed that the giant black hole at the center of the Milky Way may be producing mysterious particles called neutrinos.
Through the three NASA satellites, the Chandra X-ray Observatory, the Swift gamma-ray mission, and the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR), the scientists looked for violent events in space that corresponded with the arrival of a high-energy neutrino here on Earth.
Neutrinos are tiny particles that carry no charge and interact very weakly with electrons and protons. Unlike light or charged particles, neutrinos can emerge from deep within their cosmic sources and travel across the universe without being absorbed by intervening matter or, in the case of charged particles, deflected by magnetic fields.
The Earth is constantly bombarded with neutrinos from the sun. However, neutrinos from beyond the solar system can be millions or billions of times more energetic. Scientists have long been searching for the origin of ultra-high energy and very high-energy neutrinos.
Yang Bai of the University of Wisconsin in Madison, who co-authored the study, said that figuring out where high-energy neutrinos come from is one of the biggest problems in astrophysics today and they have the first evidence that an astronomical source - the Milky Way's supermassive black hole - may be producing these very energetic neutrinos.
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Scientists think that the highest energy neutrinos were created in the most powerful events in the Universe like galaxy mergers, material falling onto supermassive black holes, and the winds around dense rotating stars called pulsars.
This latest result may also contribute to the understanding of another major puzzle in astrophysics: the source of high-energy cosmic rays. Since the charged particles that make up cosmic rays are deflected by magnetic fields in our Galaxy, scientists have been unable to pinpoint their origin. The charged particles accelerated by a shock wave near Sgr A* may be a significant source of very energetic cosmic rays.
The study was published in Physical Review D.