Ghostly Neutrinos Illuminate the Milky Way's Bubbles ⚡ экспресс
For the first time, scientists have snagged high-energy neutrinos from the colossal Fermi Bubbles—towering clouds of scorching gas carved out by a titanic explosion in the heart of our Milky Way. By sifting through 12 years of data from the IceCube neutrino observatory (a detector frozen deep in Antarctic ice) and overlaying it with gamma-ray (Fermi-LAT) and X-ray (eROSITA) sky maps, they uncovered a glut of neutrinos blazing from the shock fronts at the bubbles' rims, particularly on the eastern side. This clinches the idea that these shock waves work like cosmic particle accelerators, whipping ions up to petaelectronvolt energies with an impressive ~10% efficiency. What’s more, they’ve caught early whispers of neutrinos streaming from the even larger eROSITA bubbles, which engulf the Fermi Bubbles like a cosmic nesting doll.
Millions of years ago, the black hole at the center of the Milky Way hurled out scorching gas, inflating two colossal bubbles. Their edges are shock waves that compress matter. The IceCube detector, frozen into the Antarctic ice, has for the first time caught neutrinos from these walls. Neutrinos are ghostly particles that barely interact with matter. In the bubble walls, shock waves accelerate protons to enormous energies; colliding with gas, they spawn neutrinos that travel to Earth, passing through the Galaxy almost unhindered. This proves that the bubbles are natural particle accelerators and reveals the black hole's stormy past. The outburst that created them was a million times brighter than a supernova. If we could see gamma rays, these bubbles would shine in the night sky brighter than a hundred full Moons.
🎯 Neutrinos are so elusive that billions of them stream through your body every second, yet only a few will ever interact with you in your lifetime.
🎬 Neutrinos in Arthur C. Clarke's novel '2010: Odyssey Two' foreshadowed a catastrophe on Jupiter, while the real particles told us about an explosion in the heart of the Milky Way.