Seven 'ghost particles' pierce through Earth, get captured by IceCube observatory at South Pole

New Delhi, India

The scientists, who have been working at the IceCube observatory, which remains buried deep in the icy south pole, spotted seven exotic and rarely-seen "ghost particle" candidates as they passed through Earth. 

The signals hinted at the particles being astrophysical tau neutrinos which act as important messengers between humans and powerful celestial events.

The neutrinos, which are mass-less and charge-less particles blast across the cosmos at the speed of light. Due to those parameters, the neutrinos do not interact with anything. 

Nearly 100 trillion of such neutrinos pass through the human body every second. Because of this, the neutrinos have been nicknamed "ghost particles."

The high-energy neutrinos which are released from cosmic sources at the Milky Way's edge are known as "astrophysical neutrinos". There are three types of them: Electron neutrinos, muon neutrinos and tau neutrinos.

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These kinds of phantom particles are very elusive and it is the mission of IceCube to nail them down. 

The astrophysical neutrinos were first detected by the observatory in 2013.

"The detection of seven candidate tau neutrino events in the data, combined with the very low amount of expected background, allows us to claim that it is highly unlikely that backgrounds are conspiring to produce seven tau neutrino imposters," said Doug Cowen, study co-leader and professor of physics at Penn State University, in a statement.

 "The discovery of astrophysical tau neutrinos also provides a strong confirmation of IceCube’s earlier discovery of the diffuse astrophysical neutrino flux," he added. 

IceCube uses digital optical modules for detecting neutrinos 

IceCube has been using a string of golden globes, known as digital optical modules, or DOMs, which are embedded in ice for detecting neutrinos which pass through the Earth.

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The observatory in total has 5,160 DOMs which are buried deep within Antarctic ice and they are waiting for the interaction of neutrinos with molecules in the ice for the production of the charged particles. 

If scientists are able to understand neutrino oscillations, it will help them determine how these ghost particles get generated and what events forced them to hurtle through space.

"All in all, this exciting discovery comes with the intriguing possibility of leveraging tau neutrinos to uncover new physics," Cowen said. 

(With inputs from agencies)