by The single, high-energy neutrino that struck Earth on Sept. 22, 2017, wasn't, on its own, all that extraordinary.
Physicists at the IceCube Neutrino Observatory in Antarctica see neutrinos of similar energy levels at least once a month.
But this one was special because it was the first to arrive with enough information about its origin for astronomers to point telescopes in the direction it came from.
They figured out that it had been flung at Earth 4 billion years ago by a flaring blazar, a supermassive black hole at the center of a galaxy that had been consuming surrounding material.
Source
Physicists at the IceCube Neutrino Observatory in Antarctica see neutrinos of similar energy levels at least once a month.
But this one was special because it was the first to arrive with enough information about its origin for astronomers to point telescopes in the direction it came from.
They figured out that it had been flung at Earth 4 billion years ago by a flaring blazar, a supermassive black hole at the center of a galaxy that had been consuming surrounding material.
Source
