Utilizing a balloon-borne experiment known as the Antarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna (ANITA), scientists detected weird radio alerts rising from deep beneath the ice that defy the foundations of physics as we all know them.
Hoisted 19 to 24 miles above Antarctica on NASA balloons, its radio antennas scan the ice beneath for fleeting bursts of power, generally known as “ice showers”. After they slam into the ice, they set off cascades of secondary particles that emit radio waves. With minimal human exercise, radio interference is nearly nonexistent, letting ANITA hear for cosmic whispers from distant galaxies. “We level our antennas down on the ice and search for neutrinos that work together within the ice, producing radio emissions that we will then sense on our detectors,” explains Stephanie Wissel, an affiliate professor of physics at Penn State and a key participant on the ANITA staff.
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Picture credit score: Stephanie Wissel / Penn State
Right here’s the place issues get unusual. Between 2006-2016, ANITA picked up unusual radio pulses that appeared to originate from deep beneath relatively than bounce off the ice, rising at steep angles. In response to Wissel, this means the waves traveled by means of 1000’s of kilometers of strong rock, one thing present physics says is unimaginable. “By the point such a sign emerged, it ought to have been absorbed,” she notes. “The mathematics simply didn’t add up.” The rock and ice ought to have swallowed these pulses lengthy earlier than they reached ANITA’s antennas, but there they have been, clear and confounding.
Neutrinos have been the primary suspect. Since these particles can go by means of matter with ease, they earned them the nickname “ghost particles.” Might they be chargeable for the rogue alerts? The staff verified ANITA’s knowledge with two different initiatives in neutrino detection: Antarctica’s IceCube Experiment and Argentina’s Pierre Auger Observatory Neither registered something that would clarify ANITA’s findings. “Evaluation revealed the opposite detectors didn’t register something that would have defined what ANITA detected,” Wissel says, labeling the alerts “anomalous.” She’s blunt in regards to the implications: “The particles inflicting the unusual alerts are usually not neutrinos.”
So, if not neutrinos, what are these alerts? The staff’s paper, printed in Bodily Evaluate Letters, doesn’t provide solutions however raises tantalizing potentialities. Might the pulses level to new particles past the Commonplace Mannequin of particle physics? Darkish matter, a mysterious substance thought to make up roughly 27% of the universe’s mass, has been floated as a candidate, although Wissel cautions that the dearth of corroborating knowledge from IceCube and Auger “narrows the probabilities.” One other idea suggests unique radio propagation results close to the ice or horizon, however Wissel admits, “We haven’t been capable of finding any of these but both.” For now, the alerts stay a cosmic riddle.
Antarctica’s ice sheet, holding 70% of Earth’s freshwater, is greater than a backdrop—it’s a pure laboratory. ANITA exploits the continent’s huge, undisturbed ice to catch alerts that will be drowned out elsewhere. The experiment’s balloons float excessive sufficient to survey over one million cubic kilometers of ice, a quantity that boggles the thoughts. But, the alerts’ upward trajectory suggests they’re rising from beneath this frozen protect, probably from the Earth’s crust itself. This defies not simply physics however instinct—how does a radio wave punch by means of strong rock to ping a balloon 24 miles up?
Wissel and her colleagues aren’t giving up. A brand new experiment, dubbed PUEO (Payload for Ultrahigh Vitality Observations), is within the works. Extra delicate and highly effective than ANITA, PUEO might zero in on the alerts’ origins. “I’m hopeful that PUEO might be delicate and highly effective sufficient to assist physicists decide the origin of the unusual sign,” Wissel says.
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