Anna Hartz
From Deep Below the Ice, Signals That Break the Rules of Physics
The universe is full of mysteries, and now one of them might be buried deep under Antarctica.
A team of scientists studying cosmic rays has picked up radio signals that don’t behave the way they should, according to Digi24.
These strange pulses came from deep inside the ice, not from above it. And that has researchers scratching their heads.
Penetrates Thousands of Kilometers of Rock
The discovery was made during the Antarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna (ANITA) experiment. ANITA uses a large balloon equipped with antennas that flies over the South Pole.
It listens for signals from cosmic rays—tiny particles from space that hit Earth’s atmosphere.
Normally, scientists expect these signals to bounce off the ice and come from above. But in this case, the signals appeared to come from below the ice. That shouldn’t be possible based on what we know.
Stephanie Wissel, a physicist at Penn State and part of the ANITA team, said the signals seemed to pass through thousands of kilometers of rock.
That kind of journey should have blocked or absorbed the radio waves completely. But somehow, they made it through.
Difficult to Detect in the First Place
Wissel called it a fascinating mystery. She also said the signals probably aren’t from neutrinos, which are particles that barely interact with matter.
Neutrinos are all around us. They have no electric charge and very little mass. They fly through space—and through us—without leaving much of a trace.
That’s why detecting them is so hard. But when one of them does hit something, it can create a burst of energy that radio antennas can detect.
The scientists checked the data against results from other observatories, including IceCube in Antarctica and the Pierre Auger Observatory in Argentina.
None of those picked up anything similar. That made things even more confusing.
Now, the Penn State team is working on a new experiment called PUEO. This detector will be more sensitive and may help explain what’s going on.
Wissel hopes it will give them solid answers. Another team member, PhD student Andrew Zeolla, is also involved in designing the new system.
Until then, the signals remain unexplained.