Chinese scientists are building neutrino telescopes in the deep sea

2024-01-12

What do people rely on to understand the universe? In addition to visible light, there are also mysterious neutrinos. They hardly react with matter and can escape from the dense celestial environment, making them a powerful tool for studying extreme universes. Xu Donglian, a Li Zhengdao scholar and project chief scientist at the Li Zhengdao Research Institute of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, said that the team is building a high-performance neutrino telescope called Hailing at the bottom of the sea to capture high-energy neutrinos and solve unsolved puzzles such as the origin of cosmic rays. As subatomic particles with a quantity second only to photons, the birth of neutrinos is often related to extreme events in the universe, such as the Big Bang, supernova explosions, binary neutron star mergers, black hole explosions, etc. Among them, high-energy neutrinos mainly originate from the collision of cosmic rays with dust and gas. Xu Donglian introduced that the Hailing Telescope project was launched at the end of 2022 and is expected to be completed around 2030. It is located in a deep-sea plain near the equator in China's waters, with a depth of about 3.5 kilometers. It has a diameter of about 4 kilometers and covers an area of about 12 square kilometers. It consists of 1200 cables and has a designed lifespan of 20 years. According to the design, these cables are anchored vertically on the seabed like giant seaweed, each about 700 meters long and spaced 70 to 110 meters apart from each other. Each cable carries about 20 optical detection pods, like strings of bells in the deep sea, waiting for the arrival of high-energy neutrinos. It is worth mentioning that the Hailing Telescope looks up at the universe in a unique way, not upwards, but downwards. "The Hailing Telescope will use the entire Earth as a shield to capture high-energy neutrinos penetrating from the opposite side of the Earth, and achieve 360 degree global exploration through the Earth's rotation," said Xu Donglian. The team expects that within one year after the completion of the Hailing Telescope, a stable neutrino source in the barred spiral galaxy NGC 1068 in the constellation Cetus can be discovered, and a neutrino explosion similar to TXS 0506+056 celestial body can be discovered. This active galaxy black hole is covered in a large amount of dust, and even high-energy photons cannot escape, but neutrinos have escaped. Jing Yipeng, an academician of the CAS Member and head of the Hailing Telescope project, said that China has a layout of multi band telescopes, space gravitational waves and low-energy neutrino observation stations. The Hailing High Energy Neutrino Telescope will fill an important gap in China's multi messenger astronomical observation network, and promote and improve the construction of China's multi messenger astronomical observation network. (Lai Xin She)

Edit:He Chuanning    Responsible editor:Su Suiyue

Source:Xinhua

Special statement: if the pictures and texts reproduced or quoted on this site infringe your legitimate rights and interests, please contact this site, and this site will correct and delete them in time. For copyright issues and website cooperation, please contact through outlook new era email:lwxsd@liaowanghn.com

Return to list

Recommended Reading Change it

Links

Submission mailbox:lwxsd@liaowanghn.com Tel:020-817896455

粤ICP备19140089号 Copyright © 2019 by www.lwxsd.com.all rights reserved

>