'Ghostly' neutrino from star-shredding black hole reveals cosmic particle accelerator of epic proportions - Space.com

A ghostly particle that smashed into Antarctica in 2019 has been traced back to a black hole tearing apart a star while acting like a giant cosmic particle accelerator, a new study finds.

Video: Neutrino traced back to black hole shredding a star.

To discover the origins of such a powerful neutrino, the scientists traced its path through space.

About six months before scientists detected the high-energy neutrino, astronomers witnessed a glow from this galaxy using the Zwicky Transient Facility on Mount Palomar in California.

This light likely came from a black hole shredding a star, a so-called tidal disruption event dubbed "AT2019dsg.".

This suggested that scientists have likely detected the first particle traced back to a tidal disruption event. .

Specifically, the researchers suggested the neutrino came from jets of matter blasting out from near the black hole's accretion disk at nearly the speed of light, Cecilia Lunardini, a particle astrophysicist at Arizona State University, told Space.com.

This discovery marks only the second time scientists have traced a high-energy neutrino back to its source, Stein said.

The first time, in 2018, astronomers tracked such a neutrino back to the blazar TXS 0506+056, a huge elliptical galaxy with a fast-spinning supermassive black hole at its heart. .

One strange aspect of this discovery was how the neutrino was not detected until a half-year after the black hole began gobbling the star.

What this suggests is that the tidal disruption event can act like a giant cosmic particle accelerator for months, Stein said

Although the researchers only detected one neutrino from this tidal disruption event, "for us to detect even one, there must have been billions and billions it was generating," Stein said