We Finally Know Where the Highest Energy Cosmic Rays are Coming From: Blazars - by spacewriter
In 2017, IceCube detected a neutrino from the blazar TXS 0506+056. It’s the active nucleus of a distant galaxy that is brighter than its entire galaxy. The data carried by the neutrino told the team that it had come from the heart of that blazar and traveled across 5.7 billion light-years to get measured by IceCube. It doesn’t just send out neutrinos—it’s also a bright radio source and pumps out light across the electromagnetic spectrum.
PeVatron blazars speed up particles up to at least PeV energies. PeV is short for “peta electron volt” and is 10electron-volts. To give you an idea of how powerful that is, the Large Hadron Collider achieved slightly more than 1 PeV in 2015.These nearly massless, high-speed cosmic rays and neutrinos are the latest “messengers” from the distant universe. For a long time, astronomers used light to study the universe.
According to team member Marco Ajello of Clemson University, multi-messenger astronomy adds immeasurably to our understanding of the universe. “It’s like feeling, hearing, and seeing at the same time. You’ll get a much better understanding,” he said. “The same is true in astrophysics because the insight you have from multiple detections of different messengers is much more detailed than you can get from only light.
The data provided by neutrinos and other messengers from the distant universe point the way to a better understanding of the objects like blazars that create them. The team members will now focus on why and how blazars accelerate particles like neutrinos. Obviously, they’re extremely energetic objects in their own right. Blazar TXS 0506+056 is a typical active galactic nucleus powered by a supermassive black hole.
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