Mystery signals detected in Antarctica evoke hope of finding new particles: Report

Hindustan Times

18-06-2025

Scientists have recently detected a pattern of strange signals in the sky above Antarctica. It defies current physics models and could represent a new particle, scientists told Space.com.
Discovered by the Antarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna (ANITA) experiment, the signal pulses were found at about 40 kilometers above the surface of the Earth.
According to a report by The Pennsylvania State University(PSU), Antarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna (ANITA) comprises ranging instruments that are flown on balloons. Designed in a specialized manner to detect radio waves or subatomic particles from cosmic rays that hit the atmosphere, ANITA experiment balloons hover high above Antarctica skies.
'We use radio detectors to try to build really, really large telescopes,' said Stephanie Wissel, associate professor of physics, astronomy and astrophysics who worked on the ANITA team searching for signals from elusive particles called neutrinos.
Neutrinos are a type of subatomic particle with no charge. They are abundant in the universe. Usually emitted by high-energy sources like the sun or major cosmic events like supernovas or even the Big Bang, there are neutrino signals everywhere, says the report.
Wissel has designed experiments to spot neutrinos over Antarctica and South America.
The new study provides enhanced context to a nearly decade-old results.
Between 2016 and 2018, an ongoing ANITA experiment in Antarctica observed a series of unusual radio signals, according to an international research group that included scientists from Penn State.
According to a paper published in the journal Physical Review Letters, the team said that the signal pulses had to pass through thousands of kilometers of rock before reaching the detector, that is up in the sky.
This would weaken or completely stop any neutrinos or cosmic rays. The signals that were recently detected were however still strong, possibly implying that something unusual was underway.
'The radio waves that we detected nearly a decade ago were at really steep angles, like 30 degrees below the surface of the ice,' Wissel from PSU added context to the journal.
Wissel further explained one possibility whereby unknown radio signal behaviour could be detected in icy or near-horizon conditions. 'My guess is that some interesting radio propagation effect occurs near ice and also near the horizon that I don't fully understand,' she said. 'Right now it's one of those long-standing mysteries,' she added.
As the angle of these newly detected signals is sharper than current models of physics allow, the backtracking process isn't possible in this case, said a report by Space.com.
Other neutrino detectors like the IceCube Experiment and the Pierre Auger Observatory could not detect anything that could explain the new signals and their upward-oriented air shower, which defies the usual rule.
The ANITA researchers have termed the newly found signals as "anomalous," affirming that they were not caused by neutrinos.