Origin of 'ghost particle' traced to distant black hole
Washington, July 13 : For the first time, scientists have found the source of a high-energy ghostly particle, known as neutrino, that travelled 3.7 billion years at almost the speed of light to reach Earth.
Using NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray space telescope, scientists traced the path of this hard-to-catch particle to a blast of gamma-ray light from a distant supermassive black hole in the constellation Orion.
Scientists believe that high-energy neutrinos 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 findings detailed in the journal Science marked the detection of the source of such a particle for the first time.
"Again, Fermi has helped make another giant leap in a growing field we call multimessenger astronomy," said Paul Hertz, Director of the Astrophysics Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington.
"Neutrinos and gravitational waves deliver new kinds of information about the most extreme environments in the universe. But to best understand what they're telling us, we need to connect them to the 'messenger' astronomers know best - light," Hertz added.
The neutrino was discovered last year in Antarctica by an international team of scientists using the US National Science Foundation's IceCube Neutrino Observatory.
It hit the Antarctic ice with the energy of about 300 trillion electron volts -- more than 45 times the energy achievable in the most powerful particle accelerator on Earth.
This high energy strongly suggested that the neutrino had to be from beyond our solar system.
Backtracking the path through IceCube indicated where in the sky the neutrino came from, and automated alerts notified astronomers around the globe to search this region for flares or outbursts that could be associated with the event.
Data from Fermi revealed enhanced gamma-ray emission from a well-known active galaxy at the time the neutrino arrived.
This is a type of active galaxy called a blazar, with a supermassive black hole with millions to billions of times the Sun's mass that blasts jets of particles outward in opposite directions at nearly the speed of light.
Blazars are especially bright and active because one of these jets happens to point almost directly toward Earth.
Fermi scientist Yasuyuki Tanaka at Hiroshima University in Japan was the first to associate the neutrino event with the blazar designated TXS 0506+056 (TXS 0506 for short), NASA said.
"The most extreme cosmic explosions produce gravitational waves, and the most extreme cosmic accelerators produce high-energy neutrinos and cosmic rays," said Regina Caputo of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
"Through Fermi, gamma rays are providing a bridge to each of these new cosmic signals," Caputo said.
Let the Truth be known. If you read VB and like VB, please be a VB Supporter and Help us deliver the Truth to one and all.
Sidhu’s diet-based cancer cure for wife called 'unscientific' by doctors of Tata Memorial Hospital
New Delhi, Nov 23: Cancer patients should not delay or stop their treatment by following unproven remedies, oncologists at Tata Memorial Hospital said after former India cricketer Navjot Singh Sidhu claimed at a presser that his wife Navjot Kaur defeated stage 4 cancer with dietary and lifestyle changes.
In a statement posted on X, the Director of Tata Memorial Hospital, Dr C S Pramesh, said, "Parts of the video imply that starving the cancer by not eating dairy products and sugar, consuming haldi (turmeric) and neem helped cure her 'incurable' cancer."
These comments have no high quality evidence to support them, the statement signed by 262 oncologists from the Tata Memorial Hospital, both past and present, said.
While research is going on for some of these products, currently there is no clinical data to recommend their use as anti-cancer agents, it added.
"We urge the public to not delay their treatment by following unproven remedies, but rather to consult a doctor, preferably a cancer specialist, if they have any symptoms of cancer. Cancer is curable if detected early and proven treatments for cancer include surgery, radiation therapy and chemotherapy," read the statement issued in "public interest".
Posting a clip of from Sidhu's press conference on X, Dr Pramesh said, "Please don't believe and get fooled by these statements regardless of who it comes from. These are unscientific and baseless recommendations. She got surgery and chemotherapy that were evidence based which is what made her cancer-free. Not the haldi, neem etc."
PSA: Please don't believe and get fooled by these statements regardless of who it comes from. These are unscientific and baseless recommendations. She got surgery and chemotherapy that were evidence based which is what made her 🤞cancer-free. Not the haldi, neem etc pic.twitter.com/7gDgN1TzZ8
— Pramesh CS (@cspramesh) November 22, 2024
