Astronomers Propose Huge New Telescope System to Understand the Most Energetic Particles Ever Detected

Astronomers have offer a truly enormous telescope consisting of 200,000 radio receiver receiver around the public , which sum up together would get across an area the size of Nebraska . They hope to spot implausibly energetic but difficult to detect neutrinos coming from distant astrophysical source .

The Giant Radio Array for Neutrino Detection , or GRAND , would hunt for these subtle particles with a greater stage of sensitivity than any telescope before it . The proposed project could potentially explain those “ fast wireless volley ” we often cover , and map the sky with uttermost precision . The marriage offer , post to the arXiv server last week by the experiment ’s collaborate scientists , suggests that GRAND as the next step in the new era of “ multi - messenger astronomy , ” in which scientists are capable to observe the cosmos through affair other than light , like neutrino or gravitative waves . GRAND is incredibly challenging , to say the least .

GRAND ’s core reason for hunting neutrinos is rather circuitous . There are particles squall Ultra High Energy Cosmic Rays that now and again blast the Earth with inconceivable energies , a billion times higher than those created in the Larger Hadron Collider . But the beginning of these subatomic particle are undecipherable . The various magnetic field of study permeate the universe change the directions of these particles , so you ca n’t just trace them back to the focussing they total from ; their trajectories do n’t betoken back to their germ . Instead , scientists think these mote interact with photons along their journeying and produce a kind of particle that does n’t flex in these magnetic field : the unmanageable - to - detect neutrino particle .

Argentina’s President Javier Milei (left) and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., holding a chainsaw in a photo posted to Kennedy’s X account on May 27. 2025.

This should voice conversant — the IceCube collaborationrecently spotteda high-pitched - energy neutrino that came from the same spot in the sky as a blazar , a galaxy retch a fountain of other high - vigour atom pointed directly at the Earth . The GRAND folks desire their experiment will finally hunt for yet - to - be - detected neutrinos that are ten thousand time more energetic than those detected by IceCube , which would stand for with even higher - vigour cosmic rays on occasion discover by scientists .

“ Blazars could maybe make neutrino in a wide vigor range , or maybe it could be something else making these higher - energy neutrinos , ” Mauricio Bustamante , editor in chief of the experiment ’s white paper and a postdoc at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen , told Gizmodo . “ We hope it ’s as interesting as possible . ”

The initial marriage proposal call for 10,000 receiving set antennae deploy over 10,000 square kilometers in some radio - muted location , likely in China , by 2025 , then 20 times that number by the 2030s . These antennae would sit on one side of mountain valley and measure neutrinos skimming and then strike the Earth from the valley ’s other side , passing through and creating a shower of lower-ranking particles . That speck shower then creates a characteristic radiocommunication signal as it surpass through the line . GRAND could also discover cosmic beam of light ( high - free energy particles ) or gamma ray ( high - energy igniter ) that interact directly with the Earth ’s air , as per the below diagram .

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The pardner are already deploying 35 antenna in westerly China ’s Tian Shan mountains . An upgrade to 300 would be around $ 1.5 million , and a 10,000 antennae sub - array would cost some $ 17 million . The full experimentation , with 200,000 antennae around the world , would run to $ 226 million .

“ Its step would make it the largest telescope in the humanity , ” Stephanie Ann Wissel , assistant prof at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo who is not involved in the GRAND project , told Gizmodo . “ While the rate of neutrinos would be low , each one would carry interesting information about the high - energy population . If it works as anticipate , I would await that GRAND could instruct us about the inception of the highest - vim particles ( cosmic rays ) , about how neutrinos interact with issue , and about ephemeral phenomena . We could combine selective information from neutrinos with observation from photons , cosmic light beam , and gravitational wave to paint a gripping picture of the high - energy universe . ”

For now , this is just a marriage proposal for the full - plate experimentation . It will require a mountain more work , not to remark funding , to get to the real thing . But this is n’t the first such experiment proposing enormous - scale cosmic particle detectors . Others have suggest turning mass , or more specificallytheir cell phones , into individual unit of a cosmopolitan cosmic - ray receiver .

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