NOvA study sets tighter limit on sterile neutrinos

Neutrinos have always been difficult to study because their small mass and neutral charge make them especially elusive. Scientists have made a lot of headway in the field and can now detect three flavors, or oscillation states, of neutrinos. Other flavors continue to be elusive — though that could be because they don’t even exist.

Sterile neutrinos, a flavor that has been proposed to play a role in neutrino mass generation and causing the oscillations of other neutrinos, have been hinted at in previous experiments but never detected. In a study published February 26 in Physical Review Letters, NOvA collaboration scientists did not find evidence of sterile neutrinos, but their work puts the tightest constraints on parameter space to date for where sterile neutrinos could be found. 

“Neutrinos are really interesting because they can give a window into some really big questions for physics, including the question of the matter-antimatter asymmetry and why the universe exists at all,” says co-lead author Adam Lister, a postdoctoral researcher in physics professor Brian Rebel’s group at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and member of the NOvA collaboration. “It turns out you can get at these questions with neutrino oscillations, and in this paper, we tried to address the question of, ‘What if there are more types of neutrinos that we haven’t yet been able to observe?’”

two 3-d plots depicting a neutrino detection at the far detector. On the left, the detections show a scatter of light, on the right, the detections show a long, single trace (wtih a small amount of scatter near the entry point)
Depictions of particle traces at the far detector. In both images, the beam enters from the left and moves through the detector. When a neutrino interacts in the detector, it can produce a number of charged particles, which produce light as they travel through the detector. The light is recorded, and shown here as points. Based on the light pattern, the researchers use a neural network to classify an event as a neutral current interaction (left panel) with a characteristic shower of particles or as a charged current interaction (right), with a characteristic long track. | Provided by Adam LIster

Sterile neutrinos have been proposed for a couple of decades, when previous experiments showed results that could best be explained by the existence of a fourth (or greater) flavor of neutrino. 

“There are a number of experiments that claim that they see something consistent with this new neutrino, and there’s a bunch of other experiments that have looked for those same neutrinos and seen nothing whatsoever,” Lister says. “It’s a very open question right now.”

Profile picture of Adam Lister
Adam Lister
profile photo of Harry Hausner
Harry Hausner
profile photo of Brian Rebel
Brian Rebel

To search for sterile neutrinos, the NOvA experiment produces a beam of one flavor of neutrino, muon neutrinos, at Fermilab and directs it toward two detectors: a near detector about one kilometer from the beam source, and a far detector around 800 kilometers away in Ash River, MN. Previous NOvA analyses measured only the neutral current disappearance rate, where any of the three flavors of neutrinos converts to another particle when it interacts with a detector. So in this new study, the researchers knew that if they observe an unexpected change in the total number of neutrinos, it suggests that sterile neutrinos did in fact influence the other types. 

Earlier NOvA work only measured this rate at the far detector, because it was the best developed analysis strategy available at the time. However, it assumed that sterile neutrinos could not influence the other neutrinos in the first kilometer. Here, the team used updated software and improved simulations to analyze neutral current rate changes at both near and far detectors, but these results did not deviate from the expected three-flavor model.

a graph of reconstructed neutrino energy on the x-axis and number of events in a given range of energy on the y-axis.
The number of times a neutrino of a given energy range (x axis) was counted (y axis) at the far detector, shown as data points. The shaded grey area shows where the data should fit if the three-flavor (i.e. no sterile neutrinos) model is true, and overall there are no deviations from this model. The dark shaded area at the bottom shows counts due to cosmic rays. | From this study

Second, they introduced an additional sample, known as muon neutrino charged current interactions, or the disappearance specifically of muon neutrinos at both the near and far detectors. Small changes from the expected rate could also indicate the influence of sterile neutrinos, but again, they did not observe a statistically significant rate difference.

Combined with the fact that the team applied their analyses to six years of cumulative data — all the data of previous NOvA analyses plus newer data — this new study offers NOvA’s most powerful analysis of sterile neutrino physics to date. Though the study could not confirm the existence of sterile neutrinos, NOvA scientists were able to search the four different samples together simultaneously, allowing them to rule out certain parameter combinations that are physically incompatible with sterile neutrinos.

“Our results agree with the standard three-flavor oscillation model, at least with the statistical uncertainties we have,” Lister says. “What we can say right now is that NOvA sets some of the strongest limits on the existence of the sterile neutrinos.”

The NOvA experiment could not confirm the existence of the sterile neutrino. IceCube, led by UW–Madison, performs complementary searches using atmospheric and astrophysical neutrinos and has also not found any evidence for sterile neutrinos.

These results are also critical to informing the analyses of the next-gen accelerator-based neutrino detector, DUNE, which Lister and colleagues at UW–Madison are already developing. 


This study was published by the NOvA collaboration, centered at Fermilab, and largely led by scientists at UW–Madison (Lister, Rebel, and former graduate student Harry Hausner) and the University of Cincinnati (postdoctoral researcher V. Hewes and physics professor Adam Aurisano). 

This work was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy; the U.S. National Science Foundation; the Department of Science and Technology, India; the European Research Council; the MSMT CR, GA UK, Czech Republic; the RAS, MSHE, and RFBR, Russia; CNPq and FAPEG, Brazil; UKRI, STFC and the Royal Society, United Kingdom; and the state and University of Minnesota. 

 

Baha Balantekin honored at neutrino astrophysics workshop

a group of around 40 people stand on a wide staircase. The text says "Neutrinos in Physics and Astrophysics, 16-18 January 2025, Berkeley, CA. A workshop celebrating the contributions of Baha Balantekin and George Fuller"

The illustrious career of Baha Balantekin, the Eugene P. Wigner professor of physics at UW–Madison, was celebrated recently at the Neutrinos in Physics and Astrophysics Workshop through the Network for Neutrinos, Nuclear Astrophysics, and Symmetries (N3AS) Physics Frontier Center. 

Balantekin works at the intersection of nuclear physics, particle physics, and astrophysics. For much of his career, he has studied theoretical aspects of neutrinos originating in the Sun, supernovae, or neutron star mergers. He has helped pioneer the field known as neutrino astronomy.

three men pose standing next to each other
John Beacom, PhD ’97 (left), Baha Balantekin and George Fuller at the 2025 Neutrinos in Physics and Astrophysics workshop. (Provided by Rebecca Singh and Sarah Wittmer, UC Berkeley)

“Even just a few decades ago, if you said ‘neutrino astronomy,’ most physicists would have snickered. That’s because astronomy is about observations and neutrinos are almost impossible to detect,” says John Beacom, PhD ’97, distinguished professor of physics and astronomy at the Ohio State University. “But, over time, physicists have helped to make this seemingly impossible field into something real and vibrant. The observations of astrophysical neutrinos that have been made have been essential to understanding our Sun, supernovae, and distant galaxies.”

Balantekin and George Fuller, a distinguished professor of physics at the University of California, San Diego, have helped lead the field of neutrino astrophysics through both their scientific work and their mentoring of junior scientists. To honor both scientists’ significant and ongoing contributions to the field, three of their former students organized the workshop: Beacom, a former student of Balantekin’s, and Fuller’s former students Gail McLaughlin, distinguished university professor of physics at North Carolina State University and Yong Zhong Qian, professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Minnesota. The event was held Jan 16-18 at the University of California, Berkeley.

a man is presenting powerpoint slides to a small audience
Francis Halzen presents at the workshop. (Provided by Pupa Gilbert)

Francis Halzen, a current colleague of Balantekin’s at UW–Madison, was one of the speakers. Other attendees included UW–Madison physics professor Pupa Gilbert and professor emerit Sue Coppersmith. 

John Beacom and Pupa Gilbert contributed significantly to this story 

 

 

New NOvA results add to mystery of neutrinos

The international NOvA collaboration presented new results at the Neutrino 2024 conference in Milan, Italy, on June 17. The collaboration doubled their neutrino data since their previous release four years ago, including adding a new low-energy sample of electron neutrinos. The new results are consistent with previous NOvA results, but with improved precision. The data favor the “normal” ordering of neutrino masses more strongly than before, but ambiguity remains around the neutrino’s oscillation properties.

At UW–Madison, the NOvA collaboration includes physics professor Brian Rebel, postdoc Adam Lister, former postdoc Tom Carroll, and grad student Anna Cooleybeck.

The latest NOvA data provide a very precise measurement of the bigger splitting between the squared neutrino masses and slightly favor the normal mass ordering. That precision on the mass splitting means that, when coupled with data from other experiments performed at nuclear reactors, the data favor the normal ordering at almost 7:1 odds. This suggests that neutrinos adhere to the normal ordering, but physicists have not met the high threshold of certainty required to declare a discovery.

Read the full story, originally published by Fermilab

Entangled neutrinos may lead to heavier element formation

Elements are the building blocks of every chemical in the universe, but how and where the different elements formed is not entirely understood. A new paper in The Astrophysical Journal by University of Wisconsin–Madison physics professor Baha Balantekin and colleagues with the Network for Neutrinos, Nuclear Astrophysics, and Symmetries (N3AS) Physics Frontier Center, shows how entangled neutrinos could be required for the formation of elements above approximately atomic number 140 via neutron capture in an intermediate-rate process, or i-process.

Profile photo of Baha Balantekin
Baha Balantekin

Why it’s important

“Where the chemical elements are made is not clear, and we do not know all the possible ways they can be made,” Balantekin says. “We believe that some are made in supernovae explosions or neutron star mergers, and many of these objects are governed by the laws of quantum mechanics, so then you can use the stars to explore aspects of quantum mechanics.”

What is already known?

  • Immediately after the Big Bang, lighter elements like hydrogen and helium were abundant. Heavier elements, up to iron (atomic number 26) continued to form through nuclear fusion in the centers of hot stars.
  • Above iron, fusion is no longer energetically favorable, and nuclear synthesis occurs via neutron capture, where neutrons glom onto atomic nuclei. At high enough concentrations, neutrons can convert into protons, increasing the atomic number of the element by one.
  • This conversion is dependent on neutrinos and antineutrinos. Neutron capture has been found to occur slowly (s-process, over years) and rapidly (r-process, within minutes); an intermediate timescale, or i-process has been proposed but little evidence exists to support it. Rapid or intermediate neutron capture can only take place in catastrophic events where a huge amount of energy is released, such as supernova collapse.
  • “When a supernova collapse occurs, you start with a big star, which is gravitationally bound, and that binding has energy,” Balantekin says. “When it collapses, that energy has to be released, and it turns out that energy is released in neutrinos.”
  • The laws of quantum mechanics state that those neutrinos can become entangled because they interact in the collapsing supernova. Entanglement is when any two or more particles interacted and then “remember” the others, no matter how far apart they might be.

A quick summary of the research

  • “One question we can ask is if these neutrinos are entangled with each other or not,” Balantekin says. “This paper shows that if the neutrinos are entangled, then there is an enhanced new process of element production, the i-process.”
a plot of mass number A (atomic number) on the x-axis and abundance as a log scale on the y-axis. a purple line shows the i-process abundance, black line shows r-process, and grey line shows s-process. Above atomic number 140 or so, there is a visible enhancement of the purple line over the other two lines (below 140 the black and grey lines are much higher abundance values than the purple line)
The abundance pattern based on calculations in this paper (ν i-process pattern; purple line), compared with the solar system s-process (gray line) and r-process (black line) abundance data (Sneden et al. 2008). The ν i abundance for A = 143 is scaled to the solar r-process data for pattern comparison. | Source: The Astrophysical Journal

The experimental and simulated evidence

  • The researchers used two known facts to set up their calculations: well-established rates of neutron capture, and catalogs of the atomic spectra of stars, which astronomers have collected over decades to identify the abundance of different elements. They also knew that a supernova collapse produces on the order of 10^58 neutrinos, a number that is far too large to use in any standard calculations.
  • Instead, they made simulations of up to eight neutrinos and calculated the abundance of elements that would be created via neutron capture if the neutrinos were entangled, or were not entangled.
  • “We have a system of, say, three neutrinos and three antineutrinos together in a region where there are protons and neutrons and see if that changes anything about element formation,” Balantekin says. “We calculate the abundances of elements that are produced in the star, and you see that the entangled or not entangled cases give you different abundances.”
  • The simulations showed that elements with atomic number greater than 140 are likely to be enhanced by i-process neutron capture — but only if the neutrinos are entangled.

Caveats and future work

  • Balantekin points out that these simulations are just “hints” based on astronomical observations. Astrophysics research requires using the cosmos as a lab, and it is difficult to conduct true experimental tests on earth.
  • “There’s something called the standard model of particle physics, which determines the interaction of particles. The neutrino-neutrino interaction is one aspect of the standard model which has not been tested in the lab, it can only be tested in astrophysical extremes,” Balantekin says. “But other aspects of the standard model have been tested in the lab, so one believes that it should all work.”
  • The researchers are currently using more astrophysical data of element abundance in extreme environments to see if those abundances continue to be explained by entangled neutrinos.

This research is supported in part by the National Science Foundation grants Nos. PHY-1630782 and PHY-2020275 (Network for Neutrinos, Nuclear Astrophysics and Symmetries). Balantekin is supported in part by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of High Energy Physics, under Award No. DE-SC0019465 and in part by the National Science Foundation Grant PHY-2108339 at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. 

The paper’s co-authors include Michael Cervia, Amol Patwardhan, Rebecca Surman, and Xilu Wang, all current or former members of N3AS.

Bringing the Quantum to the Classical: A Hybrid Simulation of Supernova Neutrinos

By Daniel Heimsoth, Physics PhD student

Simulating quantum systems on classical computers is currently a near-impossible task, as memory and computation time requirements scale exponentially with the size of the system. Quantum computers promise to solve this scalability issue, but there is just one problem: they can’t reliably do that right now because of exorbitant amounts of noise. 

So when UW–Madison physics postdoc Pooja Siwach, former undergrad Katie Harrison BS ‘23, and professor Baha Balantekin wanted to simulate neutrino evolution inside a supernova, they needed to get creative.  

profile photo of Pooja Siwach
Pooja Siwach

Their focus was on a phenomenon called collective neutrino oscillations, which describes a peculiar type of interaction between neutrinos. Neutrinos are unique among elementary particles in that they change type, or flavor, as they propagate through space. These oscillations between flavors are dictated by the density of neutrinos and other matter in the medium, both of which change from the core to the outer layers of a supernova. Physicists are interested in how the flavor composition of neutrinos evolve in time; this is calculated using a time evolution simulation, one of the most popular calculations currently done on quantum computers.  

Ideally, researchers could calculate each interaction between every possible pair of neutrinos in the system. However, supernovae produce around 10^58 neutrinos, a literally astronomical number. “It’s really complex, it’s very hard to solve on classical computers,” Siwach says. “That’s why we are interested in quantum computing because quantum computers are a natural way to map such problems.” 

profile photo of Katie Harrison
Katie Harrison

This naturalness is due to the “two-level” similarities between quantum computers and neutrino flavors. Qubits are composed of two-level states, and neutrino flavor states are approximated as two levels in most physical systems including supernovae.  

In a paper published in Physical Review D in October, Siwach, Harrison, and Balantekin studied the collective oscillation problem using a quantum-assisted simulator, or QAS, which combines the benefits of the natural mapping of the system onto qubits and classical computers’ strength in solving matrix equations. 

In QAS, the interactions between particles are broken down into a linear combination of products of Pauli matrices, which are the building blocks for quantum computing operations, while the state itself is split into a sum of simpler states. The quantum portion of the problem then boils down to computing products of basis states with each Pauli term in the interaction. These products are then inputted into the oscillation equations.

a graph with 4 neutrino traces in 4 colors
Flavor composition (y-axis) of four supernova neutrinos over time due to collective oscillations, calculated using the quantum-assisted simulator. The change in flavor for each neutrino over time shows the effect of neutrino-neutrino interactions.

“Then we get the linear-algebraic equations to solve, and solving such equations on a quantum computer requires a lot of resources,” explains Siwach. “That part we do on classical computers.”  

This approach allows researchers to use the quantum computers only once before the actual time evolution simulation is done on a classical computer, avoiding common pitfalls in quantum calculations such as error accumulation over the length of the simulation due to noisy gates. The authors showed that the QAS results for a four-neutrino system match with a pure classical calculation, showcasing the power of this approach, especially compared to a purely quantum simulation which quickly deviates from the exact solution due to accumulated errors from gates controlling two qubits at the same time. 

Still, as with any current application of quantum computers, there are limitations. “There’s only so much information that we can compute in a reasonable amount of time [on quantum computers],” says Siwach. She also laments the scalability of both the QAS and full quantum simulation. “One more hurdle is scaling to a larger number of neutrinos. If we scale to five or six neutrinos, it will require more qubits and more time, because we have to reduce the time step as well.” 

Harrison, who was an undergraduate physics student at UW–Madison during this project, was supported by a fellowship from the Open Quantum Initiative, a new program to expand undergrad research experiences in quantum computing and quantum information science. She enjoyed her time in the program and thinks that it benefits students looking to get involved in research in the field: “I think it’s really good for students to see what it really means to do research and to see if it’s something that you’re capable of doing or something that you’re interested in.” 

trace of neutrino flavor composition over time comparing a quantum simulation to a full classical one
Flavor composition of a neutrino over time using a full quantum simulation (red points) compared to exact solution (black line). The points start to drift from the exact solution after only a few oscillations, highlighting how noise in the quantum computer negatively affects the calculation.

 

Lu Lu receives 2023 IUPAP Early Career Scientist Prize

This story was originally posted by WIPAC

IceCube collaborator and UW–Madison assistant professor of physics Lu Lu received a 2023 International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP) Early Career Scientist Prize “for her contributions to the development of high energy neutrino astronomy in the PeV energy region.” Lu accepted the award on July 27 during the opening ceremony at the 38th International Cosmic Ray Conference (ICRC) held in Nagoya, Japan.

profile photo of Lu Lu
Lu Lu

Early Career Scientist Prizes are given to early career scientists within each IUPAP commission who have up to eight years of postdoctoral research experience and have made significant contributions to the cosmic ray field. Lu is a recipient of the Early Career Scientist Prize in the Commission on Astroparticle Physics (C4).

Her PhD work focused on developing a novel technique to search for ultra-high-energy photons using data from the Pierre Auger Observatory. She also played a leading role in the initial design of the “Dual optical sensors in an Ellipsoid Glass for Gen2” (D-Egg), a two-PMT optical module for the IceCube Upgrade.

More recently, she made key contributions to the multimessenger correlation studies of the neutrino source candidate TXS0506+056 and to the detection of a particle shower associated with the hadronic decay of a resonant W boson.

Lu is currently an assistant professor of physics at the Wisconsin IceCube Particle Astrophysics Center (WIPAC) at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Her current research focuses on diffuse high-energy astrophysical/cosmogenic neutrinos from TeV to EeV, Galactic PeVatron detection in the context of multimessenger observations, and the exploration of potential transient ultra-high-energy sources.

She is actively involved in IceCube outreach initiatives and has pioneered the development of an app that provides IceCube real-time alerts via augmented reality on mobile devices. Currently, she serves as co-lead of the diffuse science working group in IceCube and is one of three representatives of the physical science group of US-SCAR (Scientific Committee of Antarctic Research).

“I would like to express my deep appreciation for my collaborators and for those who work on foundational tasks such as reconstructions and calibrations, as their efforts behind the scenes make groundbreaking discoveries possible,” said Lu. “As early career scientists, we bear the responsibility of continuing and expanding experiments in the particle astrophysics field. We must collaborate and work together to ensure that the next generation of young scientists will have exciting discoveries to make.”

IceCube shows Milky Way galaxy is a neutrino desert

a red-lit IceCube lab (a metal modern-looking lab building stationed at the south pole) with the white swirl of the Milky Way behind it is in a photo, with an artists rendering of a stream of neutrinos (greek letter nu) streams out of the center of the Milky Way

The Milky Way galaxy is an awe-inspiring feature of the night sky, dominating all wavelengths of light and viewable with the naked eye as a hazy band of stars stretching from horizon to horizon. Now,

In a June 30 article in the journal Science, the IceCube Collaboration — an international group of more than 350 scientists — presents this new evidence of high-energy neutrino emission from the Milky Way. The findings indicate that the Milky Way produces far fewer neutrinos than the average distant galaxies.

“What’s intriguing is that, unlike the case for light of any wavelength, in neutrinos, the universe outshines the nearby sources in our own galaxy,” says Francis Halzen, a professor of physics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and principal investigator at IceCube.

The IceCube search focused on the southern sky, where the bulk of neutrino emission from the galactic plane is expected near the center of the galaxy. However, until now, a background of neutrinos and other particles produced by cosmic-ray interactions with the Earth’s atmosphere made it difficult to parse out neutrinos originating from galactic sources — a significant challenge compounded by relatively sparse neutrino production in general.

Read the full story

Ke Fang earns NSF CAREER award

profile photo of Ke Fang
Ke Fang

Congrats to Ke Fang, assistant professor of physics, WIPAC faculty member, and HAWC spokesperson, on earning an NSF CAREER award! CAREER awards are NSF’s most prestigious awards in support of early-career faculty who have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education and to lead advances in the mission of their department or organization.

Fang’s award is sponsored by the NSF Windows on the Universe: Multimessenger Astrophysics program. In multimessenger astrophysics, scientists search for multiple high energy signals to identify their sources and learn more about the makeup of our universe. WIPAC hosts both the IceCube neutrino telescope and the HAWC gamma ray telescope, and Fang says she is excited to have access to high-quality data from both. In her NSF proposal, she plans to use that data in two ways.

“One is evolving novel data analysis techniques to study the problems that remain outstanding, such as the source of high-energy neutrinos,” Fang says. “The second part is once we have these data analysis results, then we’ll use numerical simulations to understand our observations.”

In addition to an innovative research component, NSF proposals require that the research has broader societal impacts, such as working toward greater inclusion in STEM or increasing public understanding of science. Once again, Fang finds herself well-positioned at WIPAC, where the outreach team has developed Master Classes, a one-day event where high school students come to WIPAC, spend time with scientists, and learn about topics not typically covered in high school physics class. Currently, the students learn about IceCube’s instrumentation and how to analyze the complex detector data.

“The course is already well designed, but from my perspective, I use a lot of numerical simulation in my research, so one thing I proposed to do is that I would design a module that would incorporate some of these modern numerical study techniques into the master class,” Fang says. “The students will now learn how to study physics using supercomputers, using numerical simulations.”

Help IceCube decode signals from outer space in new Citizen Science project

Every second, about 100 trillion neutrinos pass through your body unnoticed. At the South Pole, the IceCube Neutrino Observatory detects these elusive particles and works to identify their astronomical origins to help unlock mysteries of the universe. Such an undertaking requires a massive amount of data, with one terabyte of data recorded daily by IceCube. But organizing the data can be labor intensive. This is where the public can help.

Starting today, volunteers from anywhere can participate in the Name that Neutrino project led by IceCube researchers at Drexel University, which asks users to categorize IceCube data. Through the Zooniverse platform, volunteers can join in from the convenience of their own computer or phone. Name that Neutrino is open to everyone and will run for about 10 weeks.

Read the full story at https://icecube.wisc.edu/news/2023/03/help-icecube-decode-signals-from-outer-space/

Want to get involved? Here’s how:

  1. Click on the link: https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/icecubeobservatory/name-that-neutrino 
  2. Click “Get Started” to begin.
  3. Click “Tutorial” to learn about how to classify signals.
  4. Watch the brief video and pick one of the five categories for signals.
  5. Check out the “Field Guide” for more examples and information.

UW–Madison physicists key in revealing neutrinos emanating from galactic neighbor with a gigantic black hole

On Earth, billions of subatomic particles called neutrinos pass through us every second, but we never notice because they rarely interact with matter. Because of this, neutrinos can travel straight paths over vast distances unimpeded, carrying information about their cosmic origins.

Although most of these aptly named “ghost” particles detected on Earth originate from the Sun or our own atmosphere, some neutrinos come from the cosmos, far beyond our galaxy. These neutrinos, called astrophysical neutrinos, can provide valuable insight into some of the most powerful objects in the universe.

For the first time, an international team of scientists has found evidence of high-energy astrophysical neutrinos emanating from the galaxy NGC 1068 in the constellation Cetus.

The detection was made by the National Science Foundation-supported IceCube Neutrino Observatory, a 1-billion-ton neutrino telescope made of scientific instruments and ice situated 1.5-2.5 kilometers below the surface at the South Pole.

These new results, to be published tomorrow (Nov. 4, 2022) in Science, were shared in a presentation given today at the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery.

“One neutrino can single out a source. But only an observation with multiple neutrinos will reveal the obscured core of the most energetic cosmic objects,” says Francis Halzen, a University of Wisconsin–Madison professor of physics and principal investigator of the IceCube project. “IceCube has accumulated some 80 neutrinos of teraelectronvolt energy from NGC 1068, which are not yet enough to answer all our questions, but they definitely are the next big step toward the realization of neutrino astronomy.”

For the full story, please visit https://news.wisc.edu/uw-madison-scientists-and-staff-key-in-revealing-neutrinos-emanating-from-galactic-neighbor-with-a-gigantic-black-hole/