The hunt for the tiny and mysterious neutrino particle has heated up in the last few years, thanks to discoveries made at an observatory in the South Pole. Now, that search has been bolstered by a $35 million grant from the National Science Foundation.
Neutrinos are invisible particles that have almost no mass and can travel close to the speed of light. Every second, trillions of them are passing through us.
Studying high-energy, elusive neutrinos is critical to understanding the nature of the universe. And physicists are trying to find them using detectors at a laboratory in Antarctica, called the IceCube Neutrino Observatory.
While much of the research is led by University of Wisconsin-Madison, astrophysicist Tom Gaisser and his team at University of Delaware also maintain operations down in the South Pole.
Using IceCube, scientists have made significant detections of neutrinos beyond our solar system. Now, Gaisser says the search is focused on finding where these subatomic particles are coming from.
“The important new activity that’s going on now is to develop a system of alerts such that when we see a high energy neutrino of a certain type, we make that information available to people running telescopes," said Gaisser.
Cosmic neutrinos can be produced by dramatic events, like colliding black holes and supernova explosions.
University of Delaware will receive $750,000 for the next five years as part of the grant.
