Astronomers Link 750-TeV Neutrino to 11-Billion-Year-Old Shadow Blaster Galaxy

1 articles · Updated · spacedaily.com · Aug 24

Yuji Urata’s team identified JCMT0402−0424, or “Shadow Blaster,” as the most plausible counterpart to IceCube event IC 210922A, a 750-TeV neutrino detected in Antarctic ice in September 2021.
The candidate emerged after early gamma-ray, X-ray, optical and radio searches found no convincing transient, while the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope spotted an unusually bright 850-micrometre source inside IceCube’s roughly 1.2-square-degree error region.
ALMA then resolved that source into four gravitationally lensed arcs of one background galaxy and fixed its redshift at 2.988, showing a compact, gas-rich starburst seen about 11 billion years ago.
That dense core could act as a cosmic-ray calorimeter, producing neutrinos while absorbing or reprocessing gamma rays, making a dusty starburst a plausible hidden accelerator even without a matching high-energy flare.
The paper stops short of a confirmation: the team estimates the chance coincidence at about 1%, and argues similar compact dusty starbursts could supply roughly 15% to 20% of the diffuse astrophysical neutrino flux if the association reflects a broader population.