{"id":496172,"date":"2026-02-24T11:18:14","date_gmt":"2026-02-24T11:18:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/496172\/"},"modified":"2026-02-24T11:18:14","modified_gmt":"2026-02-24T11:18:14","slug":"the-most-powerful-ghost-particle-ever-detected-is-still-a-mystery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/496172\/","title":{"rendered":"The most powerful ‘ghost particle’ ever detected is still a mystery"},"content":{"rendered":"

Physicists think they may have figured out where an extremely powerful, nearly undetectable particle<\/a> that hit Earth came from, linking it to the final explosion of a very small black hole.<\/p>\n

If they are right, that single event could offer new insight into what the universe created in its earliest moments after the Big Bang.<\/p>\n

The signal itself
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In 2023, the KM3NeT<\/a> observatory logged a particle near 220 PeV, a unit equal to a quadrillion electron volts, beneath the Mediterranean.<\/p>\n

To explain that spike, physicist Dr. Michael J. Baker linked the record particle to a vanishing black hole from the universe\u2019s first moments.<\/p>\n

At the University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMass Amherst<\/a>) the new idea points to black holes that can stay quiet, then explode fast.<\/p>\n

If that picture holds, the same idea must also fit other ghost particles that arrived with far less energy.<\/p>\n

Why energy matters<\/p>\n

The burst came from a neutrino<\/a>, a nearly massless particle that almost never interacts with matter, and it carried more energy than any neutrino ever detected before.<\/p>\n

Such extreme energy demands an accelerator far beyond any lab, because only huge gravity or violent shocks can push particles that hard.<\/p>\n

Inside the Large Hadron Collider, the FASER<\/a> experiment measured neutrinos in the trillion electron volt range, almost 100,000 times below this.<\/p>\n

Few known cosmic objects can toss out neutrinos at that level, leaving room for explanations that start in the universe\u2019s first seconds.<\/p>\n

Catching ghost particles<\/p>\n

Deep water gave KM3NeT a dark backdrop, so its sensors could spot the brief light made by a passing neutrino.<\/p>\n

When a neutrino hit a water molecule, it kicked loose a charged particle that made Cherenkov radiation, blue light in clear water.<\/p>\n

Along its path, that charged particle left a faint blue glow, letting scientists reconstruct the neutrino\u2019s direction and energy.<\/p>\n

Because neutrinos slip through almost everything, each detection depends on luck, and one event cannot map a whole population.<\/p>\n

Small black holes<\/p>\n

Some physicists have considered primordial black<\/a> holes, black holes formed soon after the Big Bang, as leftover objects from the universe\u2019s first seconds.<\/p>\n

Unlike black holes born from dying stars, these could start tiny, and some masses would let them evaporate in today\u2019s universe.<\/p>\n

Placed in our galaxy, an exploding primordial black hole could spray out particles, including neutrinos energetic enough to reach detectors.<\/p>\n

Yet no one has confirmed that such early black holes<\/a> exist, so any single candidate must clear many cross-checks.<\/p>\n

Hawking\u2019s disappearing act<\/p>\n

Back in the 1970s, physicists named Hawking<\/a> radiation, particles emitted from a black hole\u2019s edge, as one way black holes fade.<\/p>\n

Calculations show that smaller black holes heat up as they lose mass, which speeds up that leak.<\/p>\n

Near the end, the process runs away, and the final moments can look like an explosion that releases high-energy neutrinos.<\/p>\n

A link between a neutrino burst and evaporation would give evidence for that effect outside math.<\/p>\n

A charged twist<\/p>\n

One move in their paper was giving those black holes a hidden charge that does not act like electricity.<\/p>\n

With enough charge, a black hole became quasiextremal, almost fully charged and much cooler, so Hawking radiation slowed down.<\/p>\n

Instead of normal electricity, the hidden charge stayed trapped for eons, because the black hole could not easily shed it.<\/p>\n

Eventually the built-up field could trigger the Schwinger effect, pair creation in intense fields, dumping the charge and ending in a blast.<\/p>\n

Reconciling two detectors<\/p>\n

Years before KM3NeT\u2019s detection, IceCube had already seen extremely high-energy neutrinos in the Antarctic ice, each carrying more than one quadrillion electron volts of energy, an amount far beyond what human-made particle accelerators can produce.<\/p>\n

Because quasiextremal black holes stayed cool for most of their lives, they emitted fewer midrange neutrinos before their final burst.<\/p>\n

That suppression let the UMass Amherst team fit both detectors at once, without demanding an impossible number of explosions.<\/p>\n

Even so, the idea predicts bursts should be rare and close, which means future detections must line up in time and direction.<\/p>\n

Gamma rays expected<\/p>\n

High-energy explosions should also throw off gamma rays, the highest-energy form of light, alongside the neutrinos.<\/p>\n

From China, the Large High Altitude Air Shower Observatory (LHAASO<\/a>) scanned the sky hours before the event and detected no unusual flashes.<\/p>\n

Under this charged black hole idea, the final release of energy would happen very quickly, so any burst of light would appear only minutes before the particle arrived.<\/p>\n

If a future event produces a matching flash during that narrow window, it would support the theory, while another silent sky would make it harder to defend.<\/p>\n

Dark matter stakes<\/p>\n

Beyond the neutrino puzzle, the model aims at dark matter, unseen mass that holds galaxies together, by hiding it in black holes.<\/p>\n

Spread through the Milky Way, that population would sit close enough for occasional bursts, while still hiding from most telescopes.<\/p>\n

\u201cFurthermore, these black holes could constitute all of the observed dark matter in the universe,\u201d wrote Dr. Baker.<\/p>\n

Plenty of measurements already limit how many primordial black holes can exist, so the allowed window is narrow.<\/p>\n

What comes next<\/p>\n

More detections from KM3NeT and IceCube could test whether rare, nearby bursts keep showing the same energy pattern.<\/p>\n

Better timing between neutrino tracks and gamma-ray searches, in LHAASO data, will decide how far this black hole idea can go.<\/p>\n

The study is published in Physical Review Letters<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Photo: NASA\u2019s Goddard Space Flight Center<\/p>\n

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Check us out on EarthSnap<\/a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls<\/a> and Earth.com.<\/p>\n

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