Ultra-High-Energy Neutrino Detected Beneath Mediterranean Sea Baffles Scientists

In February 2023, a subatomic "ghost particle" slammed into a detector beneath the Mediterranean Sea, carrying energy so extreme it defied explanation. The neutrino contained 100000 times more energy than the most powerful particle which the Large Hadron Collider, the world's strongest accelerator, has ever generated. No known cosmic process can generate that kind of power. Physical scientists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst believe they have discovered a solution that could change our entire understanding of the cosmos.

A Big Bang Relic Behind the Impossible Particle

According to a recently ppublished study in Physical Review Letters, a collaboration of researchers at UMass Amherst has found that the neutrino resulted from an explosion of a primordial black hole – a cosmic phenomenon which is considered to have formed during the early moments after the formation of the universe. Unlike the black holes formed from collapsed stars, PBHs are considerably smaller and lighter. In the proposed scenario, it becomes clear that with the loss of mass via Hawking radiation, the temperature and the number of particles emitted increase, leading to an explosion.

The "Dark Charge" That Solves the Puzzle

The other important question was that not a single particle of this kind was found in another large experiment known as IceCube, and not only that, but it has never found a particle of any such energy. They postulate that the black holes with a dark charge (interacting via the dark electron) would prevent the emission of all the particles in those energies at which IceCube could detect them, but permit the emission of those particles at higher energies, such as the one KM3NeT could detect when it detected one of its particles.