Scientists trace high-energy ghost particle to the 'Shadow Blaster' galaxy

That means that this particle, a neutrino, had been travelling to us ever since the 13.8 billion year-old universe was just around 3 billion years old. The discovery offers the first evidence that star-forming galaxies like Shadow Blaster play a significant role in populating the universe with mysterious high-energy cosmic ghost-neutrinos. These particles get their spooky nickname because, possessing virtually no mass and no electric charge, they pass through matter with little to no interaction while moving at nearly the speed of light. For context, as you read the preceding sentence, over 65 billion neutrinos streamed through every square inch of your body; that's about 100 billion per square centimeter. Despite the difficulty associated with detecting such particles, humanity has been spotting neutrinos since the 1960s, but only a few sources of these particles have been identified. Neutrinos are the second most abundant particles in the cosmos after photons, particles of light, and the identified sources are nowhere near enough to account for this abundance. That has prompted the search for other, hidden neutrino sources, especially those which can accelerate neutrinos to high energies. Now that hunt has led to the identification of the incredibly bright Shadow Blaster galaxy, officially designated JCMT0402−0424, which shines in infrared, as a potential neutrino source. The galaxy JCMT0402−0424, or "Shadow Blaster" identified as a source of a high-energy neutrino detected in 2021. ( Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO))"Shadow Blaster possesses the kind of dense, gas-rich environment that theoretical models have long suggested could efficiently produce high-energy neutrinos," Yuji Urata of MITOS Science Co., LTD. in Taiwan said in a statement. "If confirmed, Shadow Blaster would be the first-ever individual dusty star-forming galaxy directly linked to a high-energy neutrino event." Thus far, no other credible candidates exist as potential sources for this high-energy neutrino, designated IC 210922A. Chasing ghosts Astronomers were alerted to the existence of IC 210922A half a decade ago when this high-energy neutrino event was detected . This set the astronomical community scouring space in the direction of the constellation Eridanus for potential sources for an electromagnetic counterpart to this event with a range of telescopes. This turned up no convincing gamma-ray, X-ray or optical counterpart for the neutrino detection, nor could any gamma-ray burst, supernova, or tidal disruption event (in which a black hole violently shreds a star) be linked with IC 210922A. Urata and colleagues began their personal search with the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT), operated , and the Submillimeter Array (SMA), discovering Shadow Blaster, a galaxy in the right position and with the right level of brightness to be associated with IC 210922A.