Cekricek.id – A spaceship launching, a race car racing down a track, a cheetah hurtling towards its prey — our home planet is full of high-speed feats. However, what is the fastest in the world?
According to experts, the answer is very light neutrino subatomic particles. These particles are capable of reaching 99.99 percent of the speed of light or around 300,000 kilometers per second.
“As far as we know, this is the fastest particle ever,” said Bill Louis, a physicist at Los Alamos National Laboratory, as reported by LiveScienceMonday (4/3).
In a vacuum, light is known to be the fastest object at a speed of 186,000 miles per second. But on Earth, the speed of light slows down somewhat because it interacts with the atmosphere.
Meanwhile, neutrino particles originating from cosmic rays are not affected by the atmosphere so they continue to travel very fast. This particle is said to be one of the fastest mass objects on earth.
In 2016, scientists from the IceCube project at the South Pole successfully detected neutrinos with the highest energy ever measured. It is suspected that these neutrinos are capable of moving up to 99.99 percent the speed of light.
According to expert calculations, the number 9 is used to express how close an object’s speed is to the speed of light. For example, an object that moves 99.9 percent of the time would be written with three 9s.
The neutrinos discovered by IceCube in 2016 had 33 number 9s, far exceeding the previous record. This shows how fast and violent these natural particles are.
Even so, scientists still do not fully understand the origin and mechanisms behind these superfast neutrinos. What is certain is that this discovery proves the greatness of nature that surpasses man-made particle accelerators.
Also read: Up in arms! The Star in the Heart of the Milky Way Turns Out to Come from a Foreign Galaxy
That’s a glimpse of the neutrino subatomic particle which has been named the fastest object in the world. These tiny particles are capable of traveling close to the speed of light, surpassing any record ever set by humans.
2024-03-04 01:21:06
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