GSFC: Fermi Traces Source of Cosmic Neutrino to Monster Black Hole

[bystander]

Fermi Traces Source of Cosmic Neutrino to Monster Black Hole
NASA | GSFC | Fermi | 2018 Jul 12

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

For the first time ever, scientists using NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope have found the source of a high-energy neutrino from outside our galaxy. This neutrino traveled 3.7 billion years at almost the speed of light before being detected on Earth. This is farther than any other neutrino whose origin scientists can identify.

High-energy neutrinos are hard-to-catch particles that scientists think are created by the most powerful events in the cosmos, such as galaxy mergers and material falling onto supermassive black holes. They travel at speeds just shy of the speed of light and rarely interact with other matter, allowing them to travel unimpeded across distances of billions of light-years.

The neutrino was discovered by an international team of scientists using the National Science Foundation’s IceCube Neutrino Observatory at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. Fermi found the source of the neutrino by tracing its path back to a blast of gamma-ray light from a distant supermassive black hole in the constellation Orion. ...

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Multimessenger Observations of a Flaring Blazar Coincident
with High-Energy Neutrino IceCube-170922A - IceCube Collaboration, Fermi-LAT, et al

• Science (online 12 Jul 2018) DOI: 10.1126/science.aat1378

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• Science (online 12 Jul 2018) DOI: 10.1126/science.aat2890

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VERITAS Observations of the BL Lac Object TXS 0506+056 - A. U. Abeysekara et al

• Astrophysical Journal Letters 861(2):L20 (2018 Jul 10) DOI: 10.3847/2041-8213/aad053

[neufer]

<<On Sept. 22, 2017, scientists using IceCube detected signs of a neutrino striking the Antarctic ice with energy of about 300 trillion electron volts...This neutrino traveled 3.7 billion years at almost the speed of light before being detected on Earth....Data from Fermi’s Large Area Telescope revealed enhanced gamma-ray emission from a well-known active galaxy at the time the neutrino arrived.>>

• 22,000 times further than SN 1987A
  (...with its neutrino vs light timing uncertain on the order of an hour).
  
  What does this add to knowledge about the mass of neutrinos?

<<SN 1987A was a peculiar type II supernova in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf galaxy satellite of the Milky Way. It occurred approximately 168,000 light years from Earth. This was the first time neutrinos known to be emitted from a supernova had been observed directly, which marked the beginning of neutrino astronomy. The observations were consistent with theoretical supernova models in which 99% of the energy of the collapse is radiated away in the form of neutrinos.

Two to three hours before the visible light from SN 1987A reached Earth, a burst of neutrinos was observed at three neutrino observatories. This is likely due to neutrino emission, which occurs simultaneously with core collapse, but before visible light was emitted. Visible light is transmitted only after the shock wave reaches the stellar surface. At 07:35 UT, Kamiokande II detected 12 antineutrinos; IMB, 8 antineutrinos; and Baksan, 5 antineutrinos; in a burst lasting less than 13 seconds.

The neutrino measurements allowed upper bounds on neutrino mass and charge, as well as the number of flavors of neutrinos and other properties. For example, the data show that within 5% confidence, the rest mass of the electron neutrino is at most 16 eV/c², 1/30,000 the mass of an electron. The data suggest that the total number of neutrino flavors is at most 8 but other observations and experiments give tighter estimates. Many of these results have since been confirmed or tightened by other neutrino experiments such as more careful analysis of solar neutrinos and atmospheric neutrinos as well as experiments with artificial neutrino sources.>>