In Anartica the physicists found the first evidence of cosmic rays from outside the solar system. Scientists rely on the discovery of neutrinos produced as the cosmic rays interact with their surroundings as the energetic rays themselves are difficult to detect.
Only a few actually interact with matter Of the billions of neutrinos that pass through a square centimeter of Earth each second.
An instrument buried in a cubic kilometer of ice beneath the South Pole using the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, were able to detect two neutrino events that originated beyond the solar system, the first definitive detections since 1987 (and events a million times more powerful than their predecessor).
Although the event was too small to pinpoint the origin of the cosmic rays — suspects include supernovas, gamma ray bursts, and black holes — the detection opened the door to a greater understanding of some of the powerful events in the universe.
