What is not said in the following article is that the race is on to discover something faster than light, Why? All financial transactions occur at the speed of light due to optic fiber transportation of messages around the planet, including all stock buys and sells. Imagine trying to buy stocks using the old ticker tape. If there is something faster than light, then he who has mastered that controls all financial markets. Thanks Marcus for the article. Aivars Lode
A giant 'telescope' more than half a mile in length is to be built two miles beneath the surface of the Mediterranean Sea in a bid to reveal new secrets about the universe.
The £210 million deep sea observatory will detect elusive particles known as neutrinos as they bombard the Earth from outer space.
Usually these high-energy particles pass straight through our planet unnoticed, but scientists hope that the new telescope will allow them to pick up traces the particles leave and use them to view the universe in an entirely new way.
The EU funded project, which has just been selected as a key priority in a review of European astrophysics infrastructure, promises to reveal new details about some of the most powerful events in our universe, including supernova and even the Big Bang.
The telescope, known as the Multi-Cubic Kilometre Neutrino Telescope or KM3NeT, is also expected to reveal entirely new phenomena that still remain undiscovered as they are undetectable using conventional methods for viewing the sky.
“It is really going to open a new window on our universe,” said Dr Lee Thompson, a reader in neutrino physics at the University of Sheffield who is working on the KM3NeT project.
“Much of what we know about the universe to date has been gleaned from looking at different frequencies within the electromagnetic spectrum such as visible light and X-rays.
“Using neutrinos to probe the universe is a completely new and fresh idea, so it is going to give us an entirely new perspective.
“There are objects out there that we know are emitting neutrinos but there could be things out there that cannot be seen with the telescopes we currently use.”
A small prototype of the KM3NeT telescope is already operational off the south coast of France and it is hoped work on a larger prototype will begin within the next three years.
For the full telescope, more than 12,000 beachball-sized sensors are to be deployed underwater over a cubic mile.
Strings of detectors half a mile long will be anchored to the sea floor up to two miles down and will be suspended in the water by floating buoys above.
Neutrinos are basic subatomic particles that are thought to emanate from the remnants of exploding stars known as supernovas, or from supermassive black holes.
As neutrinos interact so little with other matter, it is hoped that they will provide information about parts of the universe where light currently does not reach the Earth from – so it may be possible to learn more about what lies within black holes and supernovae.
It is also hoped neutrinos may even help scientists find dark matter for the first time – a mysterious material that does not emit any light but is thought to make up more than 83 per cent of the universe.
Most of the time neutrinos, which travel close to the speed of light, pass harmlessly through the Earth without hitting anything, but occasionally they do collide with atoms.
By building the telescope under water, which is far denser than air, the scientists will increase the chance of a neutrino colliding with atoms in the seawater.
A collision releases other particles called muons and shock wave that produces a brief flash of blue light, which can be detected by the sensors.
By tracing back the direction of this light using data recorded from the surrounding sensors, physicists say they will be able to determine the source of the neutrinos and build up a picture of the sky.
“One of the strangest quirks about this telescope is that rather than looking up, we will be looking down,” said Dr Thompson.
“As high energy cosmic neutrinos pass through the Earth so readily, we can use the Earth as a kind of shield to filter out other particles and noise.
“It means we will actually be looking at the sky on the opposite side of the Earth from the Mediterranean.
"At first glance it seems a strange thing to do – build a telescope under water that looks down rather than up, but it is going to change our view of the universe.”
The project was recently given the go-ahead by as part of a European road map drawn up by the Astroparticle European Research Area (ASPERA) network of European national funding agencies, including the UK’s STFC.
Dr Christian Spiering, chairman of ASPERA, said: “Neutrinos allow us to look deeper into compact sources than gamma rays do. They are like X-rays for the medicine.
“To see them we need detectors of the size of one or even many cubic kilometres. The next two years will teach us more about the necessary size.”
“Using neutrinos to probe the universe is a completely new and fresh idea, so it is going to give us an entirely new perspective.
“There are objects out there that we know are emitting neutrinos but there could be things out there that cannot be seen with the telescopes we currently use.”
A small prototype of the KM3NeT telescope is already operational off the south coast of France and it is hoped work on a larger prototype will begin within the next three years.
For the full telescope, more than 12,000 beachball-sized sensors are to be deployed underwater over a cubic mile.
Strings of detectors half a mile long will be anchored to the sea floor up to two miles down and will be suspended in the water by floating buoys above.
Neutrinos are basic subatomic particles that are thought to emanate from the remnants of exploding stars known as supernovas, or from supermassive black holes.
As neutrinos interact so little with other matter, it is hoped that they will provide information about parts of the universe where light currently does not reach the Earth from – so it may be possible to learn more about what lies within black holes and supernovae.
It is also hoped neutrinos may even help scientists find dark matter for the first time – a mysterious material that does not emit any light but is thought to make up more than 83 per cent of the universe.
Most of the time neutrinos, which travel close to the speed of light, pass harmlessly through the Earth without hitting anything, but occasionally they do collide with atoms.
By building the telescope under water, which is far denser than air, the scientists will increase the chance of a neutrino colliding with atoms in the seawater.
A collision releases other particles called muons and shock wave that produces a brief flash of blue light, which can be detected by the sensors.
By tracing back the direction of this light using data recorded from the surrounding sensors, physicists say they will be able to determine the source of the neutrinos and build up a picture of the sky.
“One of the strangest quirks about this telescope is that rather than looking up, we will be looking down,” said Dr Thompson.
“As high energy cosmic neutrinos pass through the Earth so readily, we can use the Earth as a kind of shield to filter out other particles and noise.
“It means we will actually be looking at the sky on the opposite side of the Earth from the Mediterranean.
"At first glance it seems a strange thing to do – build a telescope under water that looks down rather than up, but it is going to change our view of the universe.”
The project was recently given the go-ahead by as part of a European road map drawn up by the Astroparticle European Research Area (ASPERA) network of European national funding agencies, including the UK’s STFC.
Dr Christian Spiering, chairman of ASPERA, said: “Neutrinos allow us to look deeper into compact sources than gamma rays do. They are like X-rays for the medicine.
“To see them we need detectors of the size of one or even many cubic kilometres. The next two years will teach us more about the necessary size.”
