Milky Way In Neutrino Light

CLIENT

Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron DESY
SFB1491 Cosmic Interacting Matters

RESEARCH FIELD

Astrophysics

TYPE

Web, Animation

YEAR

2023

LINK

→ neutrino-map.science

DESCRIPTION

The IceCube Neutrino Observatory in Antarctica detects neutrinos – tiny, ghostlike astronomical particles. Researchers discovered cosmic neutrinos from the Milky Way that can reveal information from places in the Universe that were previously obscured by gas and dust.

For this break-through, now been published in the journal Science, we created an animation video and an interactive web-feature.

CREDITS

Video:
Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft
DFG Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung
SFB1491

Data:
IceCube Neutrino Observatory

Voice:
Margit Sander

Music:
Fabian Heinitz - substan

Deep in the Antarctic ice lies the IceCube Neutrino Observatory. It was built to detect neutrinos - tiny, ghostlike astronomical particles. An enormous number of neutrinos pass through IceCube every second. Thus, IceCube detects one hundred thousand neutrinos per year that are created in the Earth’s atmosphere. The interesting ones however are those, arriving from the cosmos, but these are only detected about 100 times per year. It is very difficult to filter the few cosmic neutrinos out from the rest.

The break-through, that has now been published in the journal Science, comes from researchers of the IceCube Collaboration. They have succeeded in filtering the large number of neutrinos with the help of machine learning. What they found was mind-blowing: neutrinos originating from the Milky Way can reveal information from places in the Universe that were previously obscured by gas and dust, regions of space from which light cannot escape.