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IceCube is a wonderful and unique astrophysical telescope - it is deployed deep in the Antarctic ice but looks over the entire universe, detecting neutrinos coming through the Earth from the northern skies, as well as from around the southern skies. IceCube is comprised of 5160 digital optical modules suspended along 86 strings embedded in a cubic kilometer of ice beneath the South Pole. The National Science Foundation-supported observatory detects neutrinos through the tiny flashes of blue light, called Cherenkov light, produced when neutrinos interact in the ice.
Today, nearly 25 years after the pioneering idea of detecting neutrinos in ice, the IceCube Collaboration announces the observation of 28 very high-energy particle events that constitute the first solid evidence for astrophysical neutrinos from cosmic accelerators.
The 28 high-energy neutrinos were found in data collected by the IceCube detector from May 2010 to May 2012 and analyzed for neutrino events exceeding 50 TeV coming from anywhere in the sky.
It's the highest energy neutrino ever observed, with an estimated energy of 1.14 PeV. These events constitute the first solid evidence for astrophysical neutrinos from cosmic accelerators.