Thursday, November 03, 2022

Messier 77

It's about 47M light years away, has an active black hole at the center, and gamma rays from the activity seem to be absorbed on the way out. But the absorbtion may enhance the emission of neutrinos. IceCube spotted them. This isn't the first time IceCube spotted a source--that would be TXS 0506+056--but it is the nearest.

Information on more sources is supposed to be released shortly--I'll update with the link when I get it.

UPDATE: Personal. I'm retired and not in the loop anymore, and I got the information pretty much when everyone else did. I have several questions--what sort of activity do other candidate galaxies show, are the other candidates different in gamma emission, are the rates consistent with the diffuse background (Olber's paradox--there should be lots more galaxies out there, and even ones we can't see should contribute some chance of neutrinos) (I didn't remember Edgar Allen Poe's contribution to astronomy.) And how much gas and dust does one need to block or transmute the gamma rays while not also blocking the high energy neutrinos--which interact much more strongly than low energy ones from the Sun or reactors?

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