Rahul Somvanshi
A tiny particle travelling through space just rewrote the record books. Scientists caught this particle, called a neutrino, deep under the Mediterranean Sea. It carried more energy than any neutrino ever seen before.
Think of a neutrino as nature’s ghost. It passes through almost everything – rocks, planets, even our bodies – without leaving a trace. “These particles bring us special messages from the most powerful events in space,” says Rosa Coniglione, who helps lead the research team.
The discovery happened in an unusual place: underwater. Scientists built a large network of light sensors on the seafloor. When the record-breaking neutrino passed through on February 13, 2023, it lit up these sensors like a flashlight in the dark.
Just how powerful was this particle? It packed the same energy as splitting a billion uranium atoms. Aart Heijboer, one of the scientists, explains it in simpler terms: “This single particle carried enough energy to power a small LED light for about one second.” While that might not sound like much, having that much energy in something so tiny is remarkable.
The underwater detector that caught the neutrino is called KM3NeT. It’s a vast network of light sensors, sitting 11,319 feet under the sea. What makes this discovery even more impressive is that the detector wasn’t even fully built yet – it was only 10% complete when it made this significant detection.
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Why does this matter? These particles help scientists solve cosmic mysteries. They could reveal what powers the most violent events in space, like exploding stars or black holes swallowing matter. “We’ve just opened a completely new window to look at the universe,” says Paschal Coyle, who leads the project.
The neutrino likely came from far beyond our own galaxy. Scientists have identified 12 possible sources, all of them special galaxies with supermassive black holes at their centres. These extremely powerful cosmic events could be responsible for creating such high-energy particles.
Brad K. Gibson explains: “The energy of this single neutrino is equivalent to the energy released by splitting one billion uranium atoms… this one little neutrino had as much energy as the energy released by splitting one billion uranium atoms.”
The detector will be fully complete in 2028. Scientists expect to catch more of these powerful particles then, helping them better understand what creates them. As Paul de Jong from the University of Amsterdam states, “Now, we know these neutrinos are not just predicted. They’re there. They’re real.
“This breakthrough comes from a worldwide effort of more than 360 scientists working together. Their findings appear in the science journal Nature, marking the beginning of a new chapter in understanding the universe’s most powerful events.
