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For decades, scientists have been searching for neutrino particles from outer space.
Now, an international team of physicists, including scientists from Korea, has discovered the first solid evidence of their existence, opening a new window on the universe.
Sohn Jung-in tells us more about this groundbreaking discovery. Two kilometers beneath the vast surface of a glacier at the South Pole, lies IceCube, an observatory where the first interstellar neutrinos were identified.
The observatory detects the tiny flashes of blue light emitted when neutrinos interact with molecules in the ice.
These nearly massless subatomic particles have no charge and travel through space almost undetected, without reacting to any substance.
But one in a million or so of the neutrinos that originate in the Earth's atmosphere or on the sun, collides with the nucleus of hydrogen and oxygen atoms in ice, producing a nuclear reaction.
The researchers at IceCube have observed 28 high-energy "particle events" and estimate about half of these came from outside our solar system.
"We now think we have seen for the first time the events that originate from beyond our solar system, and this will allow us in the future to observe the universe with a new messenger of particle and establish a new field."
But they say the number of events is still too small to allow them to pinpoint the origin of the neutrinos.
"The question is rather obvious: Where do they come from? That's what we are now trying to figure out both by getting more neutrinos and by doing different analysis that will help us decipher the problem."
IceCube was created with 250 physicists and engineers from 11 countries, including Korea, and the findings were published in the journal Science.
Sohn Jung-in, Arirang News.
