Three years ago, scientists detected something extraordinary deep beneath the Mediterranean Sea: the most energetic cosmic neutrino ever observed. The particle carried an astonishing energy of around 220 PeV, more than ten times greater than previously detected high energy neutrinos, and researchers still do not know exactly where it came from.
Now, a new study published in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics (JCAP) suggests the particle may have originated from blazars, some of the universe's most extreme objects. Blazars are active galactic nuclei powered by supermassive black holes that shoot enormous jets of plasma directly toward Earth.
Scientists Search for the Source of a Record Neutrino
The neutrino was detected on February 13, 2023, by KM3NeT/ARCA, a massive neutrino observatory located deep off the coast of Sicily. Interestingly, the detector is still being built. At the time of the discovery, only 21 detection lines were operational, representing about 10% of the observatory's planned final size.
Even with its partial configuration, the detector captured a signal unlike anything scientists had seen before.
