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Physicists Detect 300 TeV Photon That Shouldn't Exist
Confirmed
In Short: Physicists have detected a photon with an unprecedented 300 TeV of energy that traveled 2 billion light-years to Earth, defying the laws of physics.
Within a gamma-ray burst, the Carpet cosmic ray detector at Russia's Baksan Observatory identified this exceptional photon.
Certain quantum-gravity models suggest that Lorentz invariance, a fundamental principle of physics, might bend at high energy levels, allowing the photon to travel longer distances.
The 300 TeV photon arrived about an hour after lower-energy photons, a delay that fits with the proposed theory of Lorentz invariance violation.
The photon's journey is particularly puzzling because it had to traverse the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation, which typically interacts with high-energy photons and converts them into other particles.
This detection challenges previous debates about long-distance photon travel, which were limited to a few tens of teraelectronvolts.
Meanwhile, researchers are also exploring the possibility of detecting dark matter particles.
On June 16, 2023, nearly a mile underground, an anomaly was detected that could be a sign of dark matter.
Scientists are reviewing data collected over 220 days to determine if the anomaly is indeed a dark matter particle.
The detection of the 300 TeV photon and the potential dark matter particle could revolutionize our understanding of the universe.
Researchers have demonstrated a new in-plane response in a 2D system, shifting the understanding of the Hall effect.
What's confirmed
- Within a gamma-ray burst, the Carpet cosmic ray detector at Russia's Baksan Observatory identified this exceptional photon.
- Certain quantum-gravity models suggest that Lorentz invariance, a fundamental principle of physics, might bend at high energy levels, allowing the photon to travel longer distances.
- The 300 TeV photon arrived about an hour after lower-energy photons, a delay that fits with the proposed theory of Lorentz invariance violation.
- The photon's journey is particularly puzzling because it had to traverse the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation, which typically interacts with high-energy photons and converts them into other particles.
- This detection challenges previous debates about long-distance photon travel, which were limited to a few tens of teraelectronvolts.
- Meanwhile, researchers are also exploring the possibility of detecting dark matter particles.
- On June 16, 2023, nearly a mile underground, an anomaly was detected that could be a sign of dark matter.
- Scientists are reviewing data collected over 220 days to determine if the anomaly is indeed a dark matter particle.
- The detection of the 300 TeV photon and the potential dark matter particle could revolutionize our understanding of the universe.
- Researchers have demonstrated a new in-plane response in a 2D system, shifting the understanding of the Hall effect.
What's still developing
- The agreed laws of physics put limits on how far photons can travel in space – but researchers just identified a photon that's broken those fundamental rules and achieved the impossible, traveling 2 billion light-years to Earth.
- "We started from a very simple question: How did this photon survive a journey that, according to known physics, should have destroyed it?" says INAF astrophysicist Giorgio Galanti.
- There's no escaping the CMB if you're a photon packed with energy – but somehow it's happened.
- Measured at 300 teraelectronvolts (TeV), it contained about 100 trillion times more energy than a visible light photon does.
- Dark matter is the invisible stuff that accounts for roughly 85% of the mass in the universe, and for decades, physicists have been trying to figure out what it's made of.
- Has a dark-matter particle been detected at last?
- The light is detected at the top and bottom of the liquid xenon chamber.
- It's too early to say, but the anomaly is definitely attracting attention from dark-matter detectives.
- Researchers recently reviewed 220 days' worth of data collected by the detector between March 2023 and April 2024.
- However, the actual Hall effect concerns the way that electric currents and magnetic fields interact in certain scenarios – it's useful in a vast range of technologies where magnetism needs to be detected, including in flip covers on phones.
- Non-physicists might hear of 'the Hall effect' and think it relates to the way time elongates when trying to get young children out of the front door, or the phenomenon where you always forget your keys or phone as you travel through the hallway.
- "We've shown that that's not true – you can also get a response when the field is in-plane." It's a shift in thinking that has been theorized before, but never demonstrated in a 2D system like the one the researchers constructed here.