The key to the origin of the universe could be under water

The telescopes are composed of a series of strings coupled to glass beads. Soon humanity will have many more "eyes" scanning the universe in search of particles that we can solve the existing enigmas surrounding its origin. The high-energy cosmic neutrinos can be detected only by a few hidden devices in the most unexpected places: Inside Mountains, underground, underwater, and even in solid ice.

Scientists use them to unlock the mysteries of the universe, to know the nature of dark matter, the evolution of stars and the origin of cosmic rays.

Need faster than light?

It also could also be used to verify if these neutrinos are faster than light, as indicated by recent experiments at CERN, the largest physics laboratory in the world, located on the border between France and Switzerland. Soon two new telescopes will join the network for your search.

The first, a one cubic kilometer detector, replace a small octopus-shaped device, which until now has been floating a mile deep in Lake Baikal, Russia.

The second will be located at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea.

Higher than the highest building in the world

The high-energy neutrinos travel in straight lines across the universe.

KM3NeT, an acronym for "cubic kilometer neutrino telescope", will be placed at a depth of three to five miles, and will have a volume of five cubic kilometers. Consist of a device with several vertical ropes attached to spherical modules. These glass beads contain sensor to detect neutrinos.

Each string is a mile long, so once the structure is on the bottom of the Mediterranean, will be higher than the world's tallest building, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, 830 meters.  The thousands of optical sensors, resistant to water pressure, recorded the flashes of light called Cherenkov, a type of electromagnetic radiation emitted by charged particulars shock originating in the high-energy neutrinos with the planet Earth. Like all other neutrino telescopes, the KM3NeT needs to be in the deepest, darkest places possible so we can detect the particles that bombard our planet.

European Project

A total of 40 institutes and university groups with a total of ten countries participate in the European project.

At the moment, there are several neutrino detectors, but only three are in search of these elusive particles. This is NT-200 Baikal, Antares, 2.5 km deep in the Mediterranean Sea and IceCube, hidden in the ice of the South Pole. To cover the entire planet, neutrino telescopes are located both in the North and in the South, pointing in opposite directions.

Ghost Particles

Our universe holds many violent processes including stellar supernovae explosions, collisions of stars and massive cosmic explosions known as gamma-ray outbreaks. These phenomena accelerate particles to extremely high energy levels, exceeding those levels achieved in experiments on Earth and creating what is known as high-energy cosmic rays.

Scientists believe that high energy neutrinos come from violent processes such as supernovae.

Rays propagate through the universe and rain down on the Earth's atmosphere. Although astronomers have registered cosmic rays for years have not yet been able to establish what their origin.

The high-energy neutrinos, scientists believe, could help solve the mystery. These subatomic particles originated from the reaction between cosmic rays and matter, so he believes come from the very heart of that process also generated violent rays. But unlike cosmic rays, neutrinos have no electric charge and its mass is almost zero.

They have so little interaction with normal matter without difficulty traveling through space, over long distances, including transferring our bodies and our planet in a straight line. The fact that they can run at full speed through the universe without any deviation or absorption means that theoretically should be able to point out its origin, making them unsurpassed cosmic messengers.

"Record high energy neutrinos could mean our chance to see the source, and also ensure that the high-energy cosmic rays come from the same place, helping us to learn more about them and the universe," says Dr Oleg Kalekin one researchers working on the project at the University of Erlangen in Germany. But detecting such particles is very complicated. They are so difficult to track that scientists call them "ghost particles".

Big bet

Lake Baikal in Russia, the deepest in the world, is perfect to fit one of these telescopes.

Frustrated by repeated failures to detect when this distant traveler, the researchers believe they have to bet big. "It has opened a window of observation of low intensity energy," says Dr. Christian Spiering of DESY, a German research center for particle physics, linked to the KM3NeT project. "We want to adapt to higher energies and see how they look these particles are unknown. Detectors To do this we need more."

Seniors, explains, means of at least one cubic kilometer. That's why they built the IceCube detector. He started running at full capacity in 2010 and could be even higher in the future. Although no one has been able to detect high-energy neutrinos, the race to get the first evidence is underway, says astrophysicist Bair Shaibonov, the Institute of Nuclear Research in Dunbar, Russia.

This is why it was decided to improve the detector located in Russia. The promoters of the first string immerse plan of 350 meters long and fitted with spherical modules during annual Baikal expedition next year. The conditions of Baikal, the deepest lake in the world, are ideal for a neutrino telescope said.

"We have ice one meter wide, a natural platform for upgrades and repairs. No storms, and the water is fresh, so the teams do not rust as quickly. Construct a large telescope here is only a fraction of the cost of KM3NeT or IceCube. “Together, the Baikal-GVD, the KM3NeT and IceCube, will increase the ability of scientists to detect these ghost particles. If successful, their findings throw new light on the nature of the cosmos.