Human beings for millennia have gazed with awe at the vast torrent of stars - bright and dim - shining in Earth's night sky that comprise the Milky Way. Our home galaxy, however, is now being observed for the first time in a brand new way.
Scientists said on Thursday they have produced an image of the Milky Way not based on electromagnetic radiation - light - but on ghostly subatomic particles called neutrinos. They detected high-energy neutrinos in pristine ice deep below Antarctica's surface, then traced their source back to locations in the Milky Way - the first time these particles have been observed arising from our galaxy.
This view differs fundamentally from what we can see with our own eyes or with instruments that measure other electromagnetic sources like radio waves, microwaves, infrared, ultraviolet, X-rays and gamma-rays. It is not stars and planets and other stuff observable thanks to their light, but rather the mysterious sources of neutrinos originating in the galaxy, perhaps remnants of explosive star deaths called supernovas.
