Astrophysicists Think They've Found a Mysterious Source of High-Energy Neutrinos
Some of the brightest and most energetic objects in the Universe are the mystery source of high-energy cosmic neutrinos, new research has confirmed. A comprehensive analysis has been convincing enough to link the galaxies that host the fiery cores known as blazars with these mysterious particles. It’s a result that provides a completely unexpected solution to a problem that has kept astrophysicists scratching their heads for years. “The results provide, for the first time, irrefutable observational evidence that the PeVatron blazar sub-sample is a source of extragalactic neutrinos and thus an accelerator of cosmic rays,” said astrophysicist Sara Buson of the Julius Maximilian University of Würzburg in Germany. Neutrinos are the odd little things at the best of times. These subatomic particles are ubiquitous and are among the most abundant in the Universe. However, their mass is almost zero, they are electrically neutral, and they interact very little with anything else in the universe