Scientists May Have Detected Neutrinos From Another Galaxy 151
The Bad Astronomer writes "A experiment called IceCube — consisting of sensitive light detectors buried deep in the Antarctic ice — has detected two ultra-high-energy neutrinos, each with over a peta-electronVolt of energy (a quadrillion times the energy of a visible light photon), the highest energy neutrinos ever seen. The two events, nicknamed Bert and Ernie, have a 99% chance of originating outside our galaxy, likely created either by a supermassive black hole or an exploding gamma-ray burst."
Re:not so good with numbers... (Score:3, Insightful)
In my country a person like you would be called an ant-fucker. Because ant-fuckery is the only way to describe this level of pedantry. Don't get me wrong, it's not meant as a grave insult. Polite people use the term in casual conversation and nobody is offended.
Re:not so good with numbers... (Score:5, Insightful)
So if I flip a coin and cover it up, and ask you "What are the chances it is heads?" you would answer back "it's either 100% or 0%"? What kind of pedantic choice of interpretation is that?
Re:ID Tags on the particles? (Score:5, Insightful)
While the angular resolution of IceCube is not GREAT it DOES detect the direction from which the particles it detects came. This happens because, as others pointed out, the neutrino has a momentum. When it slams into a nucleus in the dectector the resulting collision debris carries away that momentum, thus the velocities of those particles, which are easily determined allows an estimate of the velocity of the original neutrino and thus its point of origin in the sky.
Of course the distance it came from is not readily determined, but if there's nothing terribly energetic nearby, then presumably you're looking at something from further away, and when we're talking about PeV neutrinos it has to be VERY energetic, not something we'd likely miss if it was nearby. Remember, we detected 2 neutrinos, that means there were literally trillions more (well, far more than that probably) that simply passed on through the detector with the same energies.
Re:not so good with numbers... (Score:5, Insightful)
"Only a Sith deals in absolutes."
Therefore, Obi Wan is a Sith.