Trio of High-Energy Neutrino Bursts From Unknown Source Detected by IceCube Neutrino Observatory in Antartica

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There are billions and billions of Neutrinos in existence but they are omnipresent in nature and extremely difficult to detect. The IceCube Neutrino Observatory in Antartica reports that they have detected rare trio of high-energy neutrino bursts all coming from the same direction, albeit from an unknown source in space.

According to Science News, the trio of high-energy neutrinos was detected by the IceCube Neutrino Observatory in Antartica last Feb. 17, 2016. This marks the first time that a triplet of neutrinos seemingly coming from the same place and within 100 seconds of each other has been detected.

Neutrinos are hard to detect since they rarely interact with other articles. Physicists are of the opinion that the trio of high-energy neutrino bursts detected by the IceCube Neutrino Observatory may have come from the same source based on their proximity to each other, and the time of their detection.

Scientists have no solid proof regarding where these high-energy neutrinos came from. However, they imply that the trio of neutrino bursts detected by the IceCube Neutrino Observatory in Antartica could have come from a flaring galaxy or even an exploding star.

The IceCube Neutrino Observatory identified the trio of high-energy neutrinos as muon neutrinos. A random event like this, the detection of multiple neutrino bursts, occur only once in every 13.7 years.

That said, physicists could not discard the possibility that the detection of these 3 high-energy neutrinos is just a fluke. The scientists suggest that the resulting detection of the high-energy neutrinos could have been caused by accidental alignment between unassociated neutrinos.

Scientists performed further analysis on the trio of high-energy neutrino bursts detected by the IceCube Neutrino Observatory by using eight different telescopes. But they found nothing clearly associated with the elementary particles. However, the scientists have been able to rule out some plausible reasons, such as nearby stellar explosion caused by the collapse of a dying star.

According to the Boston Globe, advancement in neutrino research could be applied to a wide variety of industry including, but not limited to nuclear utilization, mineral prospecting, and future space research involving exploding stars. Neutrinos could also be used for monitoring nuclear reactors and nuclear bomb creation.