Dutch scientists help discover mysterious particle with extremely high energy

European scientists have discovered a mysterious particle from the universe that has extremely high energy. They released the neutrino measurement on Wednesday, in the publication of an article in the science journal Nature. The Netherlands is closely involved in the research of the “cubic kilometre neutrino telescope,” abbreviated KM3NeT.

The discovery was made by using a special scanner at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea by France and Italy.

Neutrinos can occur during the explosion of stars and from super heavy black holes. The elemental particles are tiny. They have no electric charge and hardly any mass. Billions of neutrinos fly through our body and the Earth every second. They cannot be stopped. Magnetic fields are also unable to deflect the particles.

This is what makes it very difficult to catch neutrinos and study them. When neutrinos shoot through a detector, a light flash of light can sometimes be seen. Extremely sensitive sensors are capable of catching that.

KM3NeT measured such a flash on February 13, 2023. The neutrino had a power of 220 peta-electronvolts or 220 million times billion electronvolts. That is more than 10,000 times more powerful than the most powerful particle accelerator on Earth.

Researchers say it is hard to determine where the neutrino came from exactly. They hope to see more neutrinos so that they can get a better view. To achieve this, KM3NeT must ultimately consist of approximately 200,000 detectors more than 2 kilometers below sea level.

In 2017, a different detector has also discovered a neutrino. This happened kilometers below the ice in the South Pole. This particle was probably chased and thrown away by a huge black hole four billion light years away from Earth. But that neutrino was not nearly as powerful as the particle that Europa has now measured.