It was captured by the Hubble Space Telescope in 1994 The first picture of the pillars of creation. 28 years later, James Webb took the same shot. Although both of them served to monitor the last frontier of the universe, the truth is that Webb got a better result. A process like this seems to repeat itself in neutrino telescopes. Not only would this tool be useful for better understanding the universe, but it could help, too Solve the mystery of dark matter or the origin of cosmic rays.
However, these types of telescopes are visually different from Hubble or Webb for the simple reason that I know They are located at great depths from 2 to 3 kilometers from the surface. It also has a different target of study, the neutrino, which experts consider one of the most elusive particles. And this is not because they are few in number, because they are the second most abundant particle in the universe. In fact, every trillionth of a second, neutrinos produced by the Sun pass through the human body.
One of the leading facilities for studying this particle was the ANTARES neutrino telescope, located off the coast of Toulon (France). After 16 years of operation, ANTARES has not been operational for a few months. The reason is only to replace it ORCA Neutrino Detector.
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This is part of The international project KM3NeT (in English abbreviation for Cubic kilometer neutrino telescope), which It has a spanish post Through the Institute of Particle Physics (IFIC), a joint center between the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC) and the University of Valencia (UV).
The dimensions of KM3NeT will be larger than those of ANTARES. And is that ORCA will not be the only neutrino detector. Located about 80 km from the coast of Capo Passero, in Sicily (Italy), Construction of the second telescope, called ARCA, has begun. Thus, both of them will occupy one cubic kilometer of water – hence the name of the project -, Enough to fill up to 400,000 Olympic size swimming pools.
How are the telescopes?
The main objective of these telescopes will only be Detection of ultra-high-energy neutrinos from distant galaxies. For this purpose, the KM3NeT will consist of more than 6,000 spheres, which will be attached to ropes suspended vertically from the sea floor.
The key to this construction is found precisely in the giant spheres. Each of them has it 31 highly sensitive detector, known as phototubes. This photon detector uses the photoelectric effect with secondary emission to convert light into an electrical signal.
KM3NeT Underwater Telescope Instrument.
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Once under the sea The balls will be installed at an altitude of about 3.5 kilometersto wait for the radiation flashes that occur at neutrinos – also called ghost particles – interact with the water around them.
There will be those who think it doesn’t make sense to build undersea telescopes, but there is a scientific explanation behind this decision. And it is that water, by absorbing so much light, allows us to know the origin of neutrinos.
One of the balls is submerged in the coast of Sicily.
The same process can be done with detectors drilled under the ice, as the IceCube Neutrino Observatory has already demonstrated. IceCube has been in business since 2011, and it has a A detector covering one cubic kilometer buried 2,000 meters below the surface of the Antarctic. This telescope I managed to get it The first evidence that some neutrinos come from Blazar TXS 0506+056.
A blazar is a type of active nucleus (AGN) galaxy that contains a black hole millions of times greater than the mass of the Sun, onto which matter falls at high speed.
IceCube Neutrino Observatory.
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In the case of the underwater telescopes, the team chose the sea over the ice because of this Water scatters a little light. However, neutrinos inside water are capable of moving faster than light itself. in the aforementioned average.
KM3NeT and IceCube are unique technologies. But not because of the particles they’re studying, nor because of where they’re built. The peculiarity of both lies in their practicality. That depends Detection of bluish light – called Cherenkov light –a type of electromagnetic radiation generated by charged particles in water that travel through it faster than light.
Better than James Webb?
It’s still too early to draw conclusions about the efficiency of KM3NeT, compared to the IceCube Neutrino Observatory. According to the predictions of the researchers: ORCA will finish installing 115 detector lines in 2026while ARCA – which has the same number of detector lines – will expire after two years.
How then can there be posts where this is guaranteed KM3NeT will provide more information about the universe than James Webb? From the project itself, they realized that one of their telescopes, ARCA, would be the same Capable of mapping 87% of the skyincluding the center of the Milky Way.
Representation of the KM3NeT underwater telescope.
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Meanwhile, experts continue to debate about The origin of the neutrino, despite the progress IceCube has already made. the Supernova explosions, active centers of galaxies, or gamma ray bursts are some of the hypotheses that have been put forward.
For his part, he is CSIC Research Professor In IFIC Juan José Hernandez Rey asserts that “the Neutrinos are very interesting to study the universeHernandez knows neutrinos well because since 2015 he has been involved in the KM3NeT project, led by IFIC in Spain.” Unlike photons or cosmic rays, neutrinos travel distances between galaxies without being absorbed or transformed,” explained Professor V the meeting That brought together 100 scientists to set up the world’s largest neutrino telescope.
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