On earth have always given enigmas to those who do not find an answer. In some cases yes, such as when we decipher the strange television signal that came from the sky, but In othersas in the story that concerns us, the mystery continues. In one of the most remote and extreme environments of the planet, a great altitude scientific globe flying over Antarctica has captured radio signals that seem to come from the depths of the earth.
It all started 20 years ago.
A signal from ice. As we said, for almost two decades, a series of scientific balloons has overwhelmed the vast Antarctic desolation to more than 40 kilometers of altitudecarrying with him instruments designed to capture distant echoes from the universe. We talk about Anita experimentpromoted by an international consortium of physicists trying detect neutrinosthose particles without load, practically without mass, that cross the matter without a trace.
Billions of them constantly cross our bodies without us noticing them and, nevertheless, their detection is an extraordinary achievement: when one of them interacts with an ice molecule, it can trigger a rain of secondary particles that emit brief pulses of radio waves. Anita was created for that. But since its deployment, ha captured something else.
Inexplicable signals. In it year 2006and then again In 2014Anita detected radio pulses that seemed to come not from above (as expected with cosmic rays) but From belowfrom inside the ice. The waves arose at very inclined angles, up to 30 degrees under the surface, and showed no reflex signs.
The problem? That, according to the laws of physics known, that It shouldn’t be possible: To emerge from those depths, a particle should have crossed thousands of kilometers of solid rock before releasing a detectable signal, something that neutrinos usually usually achieves. And yet the data were there. The comparison with other neutrinic detection projects did not yield coincidences. What Anita was capturing was real … But inexplicable.
Anita
The border of the known. Scientists initially thought they could be facing Tau neutrinosa variant that, crossing Antarctic ice, can generate tau leptons and trigger the so -called “air rains”, emissions that Anita is specially designed to detect. But the angles, the intensities and the frequency of the signals They did not match with the predictions of the standard model.
Stephanie Wissel, Astrophysics of Penn State and one of the authors of the new studyrecognized that, although these signs could be confused with neutrinic events, everything points They are not. If they were conventional neutrinos, they should have gone through the entire planet without interacting with anything, which, although technically possible, would be statistically miraculous.
Beyond the standard. And here comes the most fascinating. The most disconcerting hypothesis is also the More suggestive: That these signs come from particles that do not appear in current theories. Some experts have proposed that they could be related to The dark matter or with interactions not yet described.
Other theories They point to possible unknown effects of propagation of radio waves In polar ice, perhaps influenced by atmospheric, topographic or electromagnetic conditions of the Antarctic environment. That said, and so far, none of these ideas has been able to reproduce experimentally or find parallel evidence. The silence of the other detectors and the absence of compatible patterns reinforce the anomalous nature of these pulses.
The promise of the successor. With Anita retired since 2016, the scientific community now deposited its hopes In Pueo (Payload for Ultrahight Energy Observations), a new more sensitive and robust aerial experiment than its predecessor. Designed by the same team, Pueo will have a Best angular resolution And he will be able to capture weaker or subtle signals, which could confirm whether the abnormalities detected are recurring events or simple fortuitous errors.
Wissel and his team hope that Pueo can not only capture new similar events, but also elucidate its nature And, in the best case, expand the limits of what we understand today by particle physics.
A persistent enigma. One thing is clear: the Mystery remains. The signs detected By Anita They do not fit neutrinos, they do not correspond to known phenomena and have not been able to reproduce. In other words: what is there is an explanatory vacuum, a series of data that challenges our more solid theories.
As I said Wissel herselfmaybe we are facing a phenomenon of propagation of unknown radio, or maybe not. Anita’s case represents one of those unique moments in science: when observation is ahead of the theory, and the instruments detect something that the mind cannot still understand. Thus, in the vast cold silence of Antarctica, something seems to be talking.
And we have no idea what he is telling us.
Image | Penn State
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