Project description
Breakthrough underwater telescope on the hunt for cosmic neutrinos
Cosmic neutrinos could reveal the processes occurring at the edge of supermassive black holes. Huge telescopes several cubic kilometres of ice or water instrumented with thousands of light sensors are required to track them. The sensors capture the light trail created by the collision of a neutrino with a water molecule, enabling scientists to determine the neutrino’s energy and direction of origin. The EU-funded NEUTRINOSHOT project will develop a new observatory for cosmic neutrinos in the Pacific Ocean, the Pacific Ocean Neutrino Experiment (P-ONE). The new multi-line array neutrino telescope will be able to function in extreme deep sea conditions with sensitivities several orders of magnitude better than state of the art.
Objective
For over a century, ultra-high energy cosmic rays (CR) have been observed by scientists, but their energy and place of production remain a mystery. At very high energies, neutrinos generated by CR carry messages from, e.g. the verge of supermassive black holes, but here our understanding is limited. Tracking neutrinos offers a way to trace the origin of the highest energetic particles in the universe. The stumbling block is that neutrinos, the ghost particles, are notoriously tough to detect. A target of at least a Gigaton of natural transparent material, like water or ice, must be instrumented to collect neutrinos from the cosmos. Currently, only IceCube Neutrino Observatory at the South Pole has the exposure to detect very high-energy neutrinos beyond Earth’s atmosphere. More and larger telescopes are needed to advance on this promising, rich path of fundamental discoveries in astro and particle physics. The objectives of NEUTRINOSHOT are to significantly advance the development of telescopes that detect far beyond the reach of IceCube, and make the exploration of cosmic accelerators more affordable. This can only be achieved with multi-cubic-kilometre (km) neutrino telescopes, currently limited by the scalability of technology to volumes beyond the cubic km. To this end, the lead researcher has identified the optimum testing location and established a scientific relationship with Ocean Networks Canada (ONC) to pioneer this global network as a testbed infrastructure for first case testing, deployment, and use of a new multi-line array neutrino telescope capable of functioning in extreme deep sea environmental conditions with improved sensitivities by orders of magnitude. This project will detect the first neutrinos in the Pacific Ocean and give neutrino astronomy a new “shot” to bring science a major step closer to revealing the hidden parts of our universe.
Fields of science
Programme(s)
- HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC) Main Programme
Topic(s)
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC GrantsHost institution
80333 Muenchen
Germany