Scientists study mysterious signals with almost two decades. But the secret that hides under the ice layer is well kept.
The antarctic impulsive transient antenna (Anita), In 2006, he registered a brief impetus of radio waves from the Antarctic ice. Its goal was to capture radio emissions from cosmic rays coming from space, but Anita eventually revealed something more mysterious.
“The radio waves we detected came from very sharp angles, such as 30 degrees below the surface of the ice,” explains the astrophysics Stephanie Wissel of the state university of Pennsylvania.
“It’s an interesting problem because we don’t really have an explanation for these anomalies, but what we know is that most likely not about neutrinos ”, Still advances.
However, they emphasize the authors of the one published in Physical Review Letters in March, the exclusion of the hypothesis of neutrinos does not automatically imply that we are facing a new particle.
With Anita Stagnada since 2016, a new balloon experience in Antarctica comes into play, Payload for UltraHigh Energy Observations (Pueo).
“My guess is that An interesting effect of radio propagation occurs near the ice And also close to the horizon, which I do not fully understand, but we certainly explore several of these hypotheses – and we still can’t find any confirming, ”says Wissel.
“At this time, it is one of those persistent mysteries, And I’m excited because when we launch Pueo, we will have better sensitivity. In principle, we should detect more anomalies, and perhaps we will finally understand what they are. We can also detect neutrinos – which, in a way, would be even more exciting, ”he comments.
