NASA’s Fermi Traces Source of Cosmic Neutrino to Monster Black Hole

For the first time ever, scientists using NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope have found the source of a high-energy neutrino from outside our galaxy. This neutrino traveled 3.7 billion years at almost the speed of light before being detected on Earth. This is farther than any other neutrino whose origin scientists can identify.

High-energy neutrinos are hard-to-catch particles that scientists think are created by the most powerful events in the cosmos, such as galaxy mergers and material falling onto supermassive black holes. They travel at speeds just shy of the speed of light and rarely interact with other matter, allowing them to travel unimpeded across distances of billions of light-years.

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Credits: NASA/Fermi and Aurore Simonnet, Sonoma State University

NASA's Fermi (top left) has achieved a new first—identifying a monster black hole in a far-off galaxy as the source of a high-energy neutrino seen by the IceCube Neutrino Observatory (sensor strings, bottom

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Credits: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

The discovery of a high-energy neutrino on September 22, 2017, sent astronomers on a chase to locate its source—a supermassive black hole in a distant galaxy

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NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope detected gamma rays from TXS 0506+056, shown here as expanding circles. Their maximum size, color -- from white (low) to magenta (high) -- and associated tone indicate the energy of each ray.

The first sequence shows typical emission; the second shows the 2017 flare leading to the neutrino detection.

The neutrino was discovered by an international team of scientists using the National Science Foundation’s IceCube Neutrino Observatory at the Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station. Fermi found the source of the neutrino by tracing its path back to a blast of gamma-ray light from a distant supermassive black hole in the constellation Orion.