Por Paschal Coyle (Centre de Physique de Particules de Marseille).
In recent decades, scientists have sought to expand our knowledge of the Universe using messengers other than visible light. This new field of multi-messenger astronomy correlates observations in gamma rays, charged particles, gravitational waves and last but not least neutrinos.
Neutrinos are the most elusive of the known elementary particles, they easily escape from the heart of the violent cosmic phenomena in which they are created and provide unique information on the mechanisms of their production and acceleration. In order to be able to detect these neutrinos, physicists have developed a new kind of telescope comprising three-dimensional arrays of several hundred photo-sensors installed at the bottom of lakes, seas or in the ice caps.
ANTARES is the first deep sea neutrino telescope, immersed at a depth of 2500m offshore the french provencal coast and has been operating for more than 15 years. Today, European physicists are in the process of constructing its successor, KM3NeT (https://www.km3net.org/), a more ambitious project, which will not only search for cosmic neutrinos but also allow unparalleled precision measurements of certain fundamental properties of the mysterious neutrino itself related to their oscillation phenomena and their masses.
These novel underwater observatories are also multi-disciplinary scientific and technological platforms allowing the connection of a wide variety of instrumentation for real-time observation of the abyssal marine environment.
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