сотрудники Баксанской нейтринной обсерватории Института ядерных исследований РАН совместно с учёными МГУ имени М.В. Ломоносова зарегистрировали гамма-квант с рекордной энергией — 300 тераэлектронвольт (ТэВ). Частица пришла от гамма-всплеска GRB221009A, возникшего в результате взрыва сверхновой на расстоянии более 2 млрд световых лет от Земли.
The "Carpet-3" installation, located in Kabardino-Balkaria, recorded the event 2536 seconds after the start of the burst. Previously, the Chinese observatory LHAASO detected radiation from the same source with an energy of 18 TeV, but the Russian data turned out to be many times more powerful.
The direction of the event exactly matches the direction of the gamma-ray burst, we can say that we are 99 percent sure of the result.
According to the Zatsepin-Kuzmin-Greisen theory (1966), high-energy particles should lose energy when interacting with relic radiation. However, the recorded gamma-ray either overcame this barrier, or its source is closer than expected. This calls into question modern models of radiation propagation in the Universe.
Of course, such a possibility remains (the possibility of a gamma-ray arriving from a closer distance, ed. note), but LHAASO observations are also difficult to explain in a standard way. But they also came from the same direction and at the same time as the gamma-ray burst! And there are no other candidates for sources. Therefore, the idea arose to revise modern ideas about the propagation of radiation in the Universe.
"Carpet-3" is an array of ground-based detectors that capture cascades of particles that occur when gamma-rays collide with the atmosphere. The energy of the original particle is calculated by complex data reconstruction.
The discovery could revolutionize our understanding of high-energy processes in space. For comparison: the energy of protons at the Large Hadron Collider reaches only 14 TeV.
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