A group of researchers in Antarctica has found strange radio waves from under the ice.
According to the results published in The Physical Review Letters, the mysterious radio waves have been discovered by the transitional ancurrent Antarctic antenna (Anita).
During this experience, the researchers analyzed the signals traveling on earth using a variety of instruments.
Using balloons to send high instruments in the atmosphere, the objective was to obtain new understanding of cosmic events through the universe.
According to the press release, the reason why the Antarctica was the site of this experiences was due little or no interference from the other radio waves.
However, the researchers found radio waves transmitted instead under the ice.
Stephanie Wissel, associate professor of physics, astronomy and astrophysics of Penn State, and one of the researchers discussed in a press release from the college, revealed that they had discovered the radio waves by looking for a particle known as Neutrinos.
“The radio waves that we detected were at really steep angles, like 30 degrees below the surface of the ice,” Wissel said in the press release.
Wissel continued by explaining that radio waves should have been undetectable.
The waves should have traveled thousands of kilometers of rock and have been absorbed in the rocks.
She also declared in the press release that the team of researchers had no answer on the way in which these neutrinos had been detected.
According to Wissel, neutrinos are important for understanding the universe due to emissions by high energy sources and are generally difficult to detect.
Wissel said you could get a billion neutrinos at any time, but they don’t interact with you.
“So, this is the problem of the double -edged sword. If we detect them, it means that they have traveled all this path without interacting with something else. We could detect a neutrino from the edge of the observable universe,” said Wissel.
Once discovered, these particles can reveal data and information on cosmic events that even the most powerful telescopes cannot.
According to Wissel, the ball is sent 40 kilometers or 29 miles above the ice to catch the emission signals.
However, the researchers referred their results with two other experiences and found that their results did not correspond.
This means that what they found were not neutrinos but something else.
Wissel said there were theories that this could be dark matter, but that cannot be confirmed and remains a mystery.
“I guess that some interesting radio propagation effects occur near the ice and also close to the horizon that I do not understand completely, but we have certainly explored several of them, and we have not yet been able to find any of them,” said Wissel.