Bizarre, High Energy Particles Flying Out of Antarctica’s Ice

There’s something mysterious coming up from the frozen ground in Antarctica, and it could break physics as we know it.

Physicists don’t know what it is exactly. But they do know it’s some sort of cosmic ray — a high-energy particle that’s blasted its way through space, into the Earth, and back out again. But the particles physicists know about — the collection of particles that make up what scientists call the Standard Model (SM) of particle physics — shouldn’t be able to do that. Sure, there are low-energy neutrinos that can pierce through miles upon miles of rock unaffected. But high-energy neutrinos, as well as other high-energy particles, have “large cross-sections.” That means that they’ll almost always crash into something soon after zipping into the Earth and never make it out the other side.

And yet, since March 2016, researchers have been puzzling over two events in Antarctica where cosmic rays did burst out from the Earth, and were detected by NASA’s Antarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna (ANITA) — a balloon-borne antenna drifting over the southern continent.

ANITA is designed to hunt cosmic rays from outer space, so the high-energy neutrino community was buzzing with excitement when the instrument detected particles that seemed to be blasting up from Earth instead of zooming down from space. Because cosmic rays shouldn’t do that, scientists began to wonder whether these mysterious beams are made of particles never seen before.

LiveScience

16 Comments on "Bizarre, High Energy Particles Flying Out of Antarctica’s Ice"

Antius on Sun, 30th Sep 2018 3:01 pm

The particles are probably muons.

High energy neutrinos almost invariably pass through the Earth without interacting. In fact, you would need 5 lightyears of solid lead to absorb half of them. They don’t have high cross-section; quite then opposite. Bit of a scientifically illiterate article written by people that don’t know what the fuck they are talkng about.

Ghung on Sun, 30th Sep 2018 4:38 pm

” Bit of a scientifically illiterate article written by people that don’t know what the fuck they are talkng about.”

Seems you didn’t go to the link and read the whole article. None of the particle physicists cited or their papers mention muons. It said they have ruled out all of the standard model particles including their decay components.

But maybe you know more than they do and are therefore not an asshole. I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt.

Nostradamus on Sun, 30th Sep 2018 4:40 pm

Nasty people on these forums.

Coffeeguyzz on Sun, 30th Sep 2018 5:01 pm

Ark of Gabriel.

Antius on Sun, 30th Sep 2018 5:02 pm

Ghung, I just read what was posted and it sounded like shite. Talking nonsense about neutrinos that is blatantly false. Maybe I should have gone to the original source. Then again I’m an asshole and I have no patience. Especially with assholes that call me an asshole 🙂

Ghung on Sun, 30th Sep 2018 5:21 pm

Gosh, Antius, I gave you the benefit of the doubt, unlike many folks will on this side of the board :-0

Sissyfuss on Sun, 30th Sep 2018 5:38 pm

Antiyouse is wound a little tight,Ghung. His social skills are a bit wonting as his brain has been filled with numbers and chemical symbols without relent. Hard to schmooze an algorithm.

Antius on Sun, 30th Sep 2018 6:35 pm

If they have discovered a non standard model particle, then this is quite possibly the find of the century.

The reason I initially thought it might be a muon, is that they do penetrate several hundred metres into the Earth’s crust. But I’m sure that was accounted for.

I’m off to bed now. Its late.

makati1 on Sun, 30th Sep 2018 7:25 pm

Those who put the article down as bullshit have a doctorate and 40 years of working with physics? There are a lot of unknowns left to discover. Only a fool would believe he knows everything. As you get older, you realize that you know very little, even with a doctorate.

Keith McClary on Mon, 1st Oct 2018 12:39 am