The strange signals detected from Antarctic ice seem to ignore the laws of physics. Scientists are looking for answers

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Scientists are trying to solve a decade-long mystery by identifying the abnormal signals detected under the ice under the Antarctic.

In the search for another unusual phenomenon, strange radio waves emerge: high-energy cosmic particles are called neutrinos. Neutrinos reach the Earth from a distance of the universe, often referred to as “ghosts” because they are very volatile or evaporated and can experience any type of matter without changing.

Over the past decade, researchers have conducted multiple experiments using large quantities of water and ice designed to find neutrinos that may reveal mysterious cosmic rays, the most capable particles in the universe. One of these projects is NASA's Antarctic Impulse Transient Antenna or Anita, which flew balloons carrying instruments above Antarctica between 2006 and 2016.

It was during this hunt that Anita picked up an anti-broadcast wave that seemed not to be a neutrino.

These signals come from below the horizon, indicating that they have passed thousands of miles of rock before reaching the detector. But radio waves should be absorbed by rocks. The Anita team believes that these anomalies cannot be explained by the current understanding of particle physics.

Follow-up observations and analysis of other tools, including a recent instrument conducted by the Pierre Auger Observatory in Argentina, could not find the same signal. The results of the Pierre Auger collaboration were published in the March issue of Physical Review.

The origin of anomalies remains unclear, said Stephanie Wissel, co-author of the study of Stephanie Wissel, associate professor of physics, astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State University.

“Our new research shows that experiments don't see this (signal) … like the Pierre Ogel Observatory,” Wiesel said. “So, this doesn't mean there is new physics, but more information is added to the story.”

The larger, more sensitive detector may be able to solve this mystery, or ultimately prove whether the anomaly signal is fluworm, while continuing to search for mysterious neutrinos and their sources, scientists say.

Looking for Neutral

Detection of neutrinos on Earth allows researchers to trace them back to their origins, which scientists believe is primarily cosmic rays that hit the atmosphere of our Earth.

The most energetic particles in cosmic rays are composed primarily of protons or nuclei, and they are released throughout the universe because anything that produces them is such a powerful particle accelerator that it dwarfs the power of the large Hadron Collider. Neutrinos can help astronomers better understand cosmic rays and why they are pushed out in the universe.

But neutrinos are hard to find because they have little mass and can pass through the most extreme environments, such as stars and the entire galaxy, without any change. However, they do interact with water and ice.

Justin Vandenbrucke said Anita aims to find the highest energy neutrinos in the universe, higher than the energy not yet discovered. He said the experimental radio antenna searches for short pulses generated by neutrinos when they collide with atoms in Antarctic ice, resulting in showers of low-energy particles.

During the flight, Anita discovered a high-energy fountain from ice, an upper-heavy cosmic ray. The detector is also sensitive to ultra-high energy cosmic rays that rain on Earth and produce radio bursts like a flashlight of radio waves.

When Anita looks at cosmic rays, the flashlight is indeed a second of radio waves that can be mapped like a wave to a second to show how it reflects from the ice.

Exceptions in the data

Two times from data from Anita flights, the original team of the experiment found that the signal appeared from the ice at a sharper angle than any model predicted, making it impossible to trace the signal to its original source.

“The radio waves we discovered nearly a decade ago are very steep at an angle of 30 degrees below the surface of the ice,” Wiesel said.

Vandenbrooke said neutrinos can go through many things, but they don’t travel all the way through the earth.

“They are expected to be from slightly below the horizon, where not much of the Earth is absorbed,” he wrote in an email. “The Anita anomalies are fascinating because they appear to come from below the horizon, so neutrinos have to cross much of the Earth. This is according to the standard model of particle physics.”

Pierre Auger’s collaboration includes hundreds of scientists around the world, analyzing data for more than a decade to understand the abnormal signals Anita detected.

The team also used their observatory to try to find the same signal. The auger Observatory is a hybrid detector that uses two methods to find and study cosmic rays. One approach relies on finding high-energy particles when interacting with water in a tank on the Earth’s surface, while another tracks the potential interactions of ultraviolet light in our planet’s atmosphere.

“The auger Observatory uses a very different technique to observe ultra-high energy cosmic ray air showers, using the secondary light of charged particles to travel through the atmosphere to determine the direction of the cosmic rays that initiate it.” “By using computer simulations, if such particles behave like Anita anomaly, they can generate a template for similar events and then search for their data to see if similar events have occurred.”

Gorham, who was not involved in the new study, designed the Anita experiment and conducted other studies to learn more about anomaly signals.

Vandenbrooke said that while the auger observatory was designed to measure downward particle showers generated by ultra-high energy cosmic rays in the atmosphere, the team redesigned the data analysis to find the upward flowing aerial showers. Vandenbrooke did not conduct the new research, but he reviewed it before publication.

“Auger has a huge collection area in such activities, larger than Anita,” he said. “If the Anita anomaly event is produced by any particle passing through the Earth and then an upward shower, then Auger should have detected many of these particles, but that's not the case.”

Using a separate follow-up study of the IceCube experiment, the study's sensors were embedded in Antarctic ice and also searched for anomalous signals.

“Because Icecube is very sensitive, if Anita anomalies are neutrinos, then we will find them,” Vandenbrooke wrote. Vandenbrooke served as Colead for the Icecube Neutrino Source Source Group between 2019 and 2022.

“This is an interesting question because we still don't actually explain these anomalies, but what we know is that they most likely do not represent neutrinos,” Wiesel said.

Strangely, a different kind of neutrino called tau neutrino is a hypothesis proposed by some scientists and is responsible for abnormal signals.

tau neutrinos can be regenerated. When they decay at high energy, they produce another tau neutrino, as well as a particle called tau Lepton – similar to electrons, but much heavier.

But what makes the Tau neutrino scene extremely unlikely is the steepness of the angles associated with the signal, Wissel said.

“You want all these Tau neutrinos to be very, very close to the horizon, just like one to five degrees below the horizon,” Wiesel said. “There are too much materials. They actually lose a lot of energy and cannot be detected.”

The future of detection

Ultimately, Gorham and other scientists don't know what the origin of the anomaly event is. So far, no explanation matches the signal, which is what brings scientists back to what is trying to solve the mystery. However, the answer may be in the opinion of this.

Wissel is also working on a new detector, the ultra-high energy observation payload or PUEO, which will start flying for one month in December. Wiesel said that it is bigger than Anita and 10 times more sensitive, and Pueo can reveal more about the abnormal signals that Anita detects.

“Now, this is one of these long-standing mysteries,” Wiesel said. “I'm excited that when we fly, we will have better sensitivity. In principle, we should be able to better understand these anomalies, which will go a long way toward understanding our background and ultimately discover neutrinos in the future.”

Gorham said the acronym for citing Hawaiian owls should have the sensitivity to capture many abnormal signals and help scientists find the answer.

“Sometimes, you just have to go back to the drawing board and really figure out what these things are,” Wiesel said. “The most likely scenario is that some mundane physics can be explained, but we kind of knocked on the door and tried to figure out what these are.”

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