IceCube Neutrino Observatory sits beneath a green aurora in the icy Antarctic (Image credit: IceCube/ NSF)
Scientists have traced the galactic origins of thousands of “ghost particles” known as neutrinos to create the first-ever portrait of the Milky Way made from matter and not light — and it’s given them a brand-new way to study the universe.
The groundbreaking image was snapped by capturing the neutrinos as they fell through the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, a gigantic detector buried deep inside the South Pole’s ice.
Neutrinos earn their spooky nickname because their nonexistent electrical charge and almost-zero mass mean they barely interact with other types of matter. As such, neutrinos fly straight through regular matter at close to the speed of light.
Related: Ghostly neutrino particles are blasting out of a nearby galaxy, and scientists aren’t sure why
Yet by slowing these neutrinos, physicists have finally traced the particles’ origins billions of light-years away to ancient, cataclysmic stellar explosions and cosmic-ray collisions. The researchers published their findings June 29 in the journal Science.
“The capabilities provided by the highly sensitive IceCube detector, coupled with new data analysis tools, have given us an entirely new view of our galaxy — one that had only been hinted at before,” Denise Caldwell, director of the National Science Foundation’s physics division, which funded the research, said in a statement. “As these capabilities continue to be refined, we can look forward to watching this picture emerge with ever-increasing resolution, potentially revealing hidden features of our galaxy never before seen by humanity.”
Two images of the Milky Way galaxy. The top was made with visible light and the bottom with neutrinos. (Image credit: IceCube Collaboration/U.S. National Science Foundation (Lily Le & Shawn Johnson)/ESO (S. Brunier)) How to catch a ghost particle
Every second, about 100 billion neutrinos pass through each square centimeter of your body. The tiny particles are everywhere — produced in the nuclear fire of stars, in enormous supernova explosions, by cosmic rays and radioactive decay, and in particle accelerators and nuclear reactors on Earth. In fact, neutrinos, which were first discovered zipping out of a nuclear reactor in 1956, are second only to photons as the most abundant subatomic particles in the universe.
Despite their ubiquity, the chargeless and near-massless particles’ minimal interactions with other matter make neutrinos incredibly difficult to detect. Many famous neutrino-detection experiments have spotted the steady bombardment of neutrinos sent to us from the sun, but this cascade also masks neutrinos from more unusual sources, such as gigantic star explosions called supernovas and particle showers produced by cosmic rays.
To capture the neutrinos, particle physicists turned to IceCube, located at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station in Antarctica. The gigantic detector consists of more than 5,000 optical sensors beaded across 86 strings that dangle into holes drilled up to 1.56 miles (2.5 kilometers) into the Antarctic ice.
The view down one of IceCube’s 86 detector strings, which dangle in holes drilled up to 1.56 miles into the ice. (Image credit: NSF/B. Gudbjartsson.)
While many neutrinos pass completely unimpeded through the Earth, they do occasionally interact with water molecules, creating particle byproducts called muons that can be witnessed as flashes of light inside the detector’s sensors. From the patterns these flashes make, scientists can reconstruct the energy, and sometimes the sources, of the neutrinos.
Finding a neutrino’s starting point depends on how clear its direction is recorded in the detector; some have very obvious initial directions, whereas others produce cascading “fuzz balls of light” that obscure their origins, lead author Naoko Kurahashi Neilson, a physicist at Drexel University in Philadelphia, said in the statement.RELATED STORIES—Astronomers propose making a neutrino detector out of the Pacific Ocean
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By feeding more than 60,000 detected neutrino cascades collected over 10 years into a machine-learning algorithm, the physicists built up a stunning picture: an ethereal, blue-tinged image showing the neutrinos’ sources all across our galaxy.
The map showed that the neutrinos were being overwhelmingly produced in regions with previously detected high gamma-ray counts, confirming past suspicions that many ghost particles are summoned as byproducts of cosmic rays smashing into interstellar gas. It also left the physicists awestruck.
“I remember saying, ‘At this point in human history, we’re the first ones to see our galaxy in anything other than light,'” Neilson said.
Just like previous revolutionary advances such as radio astronomy, infrared astronomy and gravitational wave detection, neutrino mapping has given us a completely new way to peer out into the universe. Now, it’s time to see what we find.
The levies were expected to all take effect on Tuesday, with Mexico and Canada both announcing counter-tariffs of their own in response.
However, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said in a news conference on Monday that implementation of the tariffs would be paused for a month, after she and Mr Trump had a conversation and came to an agreement.
But Mr Trump has also threatened to go further, saying tariffs on the European Union would be implemented “pretty soon”.
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Trump’s proposed tariffs
When questioned about the UK, the president said Britain was “out of line” when it came to trade but he thought the situation could be “worked out” without the use of tariffs.
What are tariffs, and how do they work?
Put simply, tariffs are taxes on goods that are brought in from other countries.
By raising the price of imports, tariffs aim to protect domestic manufacturers by making locally made goods cheaper.
Contrary to what Mr Trump has said, it is not foreign countries that pay tariffs, but the importing companies that buy the goods.
For example, American businesses like Walmart or Target pay tariffs directly to the US treasury.
In the US, these tariffs are collected by customs and border protection agents, who are stationed at 328 ports of entry across the country.
To compensate for tariffs, companies then put up their prices, so customers end up paying more for goods.
Tariffs can also damage foreign countries as it makes their products pricier and harder to sell.
This can lead to them cutting prices (and sacrificing profits) to offset levies and maintain their market share in the US.
Why is Trump doing this?
Mr Trump has argued that imposing higher levies will help reduce illegal migration and the smuggling of the synthetic opioid fentanyl to the US.
On Mexico, the US leader claimed drug traffickers and the country’s government “have an intolerable alliance” that in turn impacts national security.
He further claimed that Mexican drug cartels are operating in Canada.
On China, he said the country’s government provides a “safe haven” for criminal organisations.
He has also pledged to use tariffs to boost domestic manufacturing.
“We may have short term some little pain, and people understand that. But long term, the United States has been ripped off by virtually every country in the world,” he said.
His aim appears to be to force governments in those countries to work much harder to prevent what he calls illegal migration and the smuggling of the deadly drug fentanyl – as appears to have been agreed by Mexico. But, even if the countries do not do what America wants, it will still potentially benefit firms that produce goods in the US.
What could the consequences be?
Mexico and Canada are two of America’s largest trading partners, with the tariffs upending decades-old trade relationships.
Goods that could be affected most by the incoming tariffs include fruit and veg, petrol and oil, cars and vehicle parts and electronic goods.
New analysis by the Budget Lab at Yale University found that the average US household would lose the equivalent of $1,170 US dollars (£944) in income from the tariffs.
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Why Trump’s tariffs could cost you
The research also found that economic growth would slow and inflation would worsen, as the tariffs forced up prices.
Immediate consequences were felt on Monday morning, as shares on Asian markets took a tumble.
Japan’s Nikkei opened down 2.9% while Australia’s benchmark – often a proxy trade for Chinese markets – fell 1.8%. Stocks in Hong Kong, which include listings of Chinese companies, fell 1.1%.
UK stocks were also significantly down, with the benchmark FTSE 100 index – containing the most valuable companies on the London Stock Exchange – dropped more than 1.3% on the open.
In Europe, stock markets opened sharply lower while the euro slid 1.3%. The Europe-wide index of companies, the Stoxx 600 dropped as much as 1.5%.
While Mexico’s peso hit its lowest in nearly three years.
‘Very scary path’
Sky News’ data and economics editorEd Conway said the long term consequences of a trade war is that “everyone gets poorer”, which is what happened to the world before World War Two.
“As countries get poorer, they get frustrated and you get more nationalism,” Conway said, speaking on Friday’s Sky News Daily podcast.
“This is exactly what happened in the 1930s, and the world ended up at war with each other. It is a very, very scary path, and yes, we are basically on a potential of that path.”
However, Conway added that one positive of Mr Trump’s tariffs could be highlighting “massive imbalances” within the global economy.
He said Mr Trump may be able to shift the conversation to problems that “economists don’t want to talk about”.
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“At the moment, we have a dysfunctional global economy,” he explained.
“You have got massive imbalances like trade deficits [when a country’s imports exceeds the value of its exports] and trade surpluses [when a country’s exports exceeds the cost of its imports].
“There might well be a better way of everyone getting together and having a conversation and working out how to align their affairs, so we don’t have these imbalances in the future.
“And tariffs help to get you to this point.”
How has the world reacted?
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau reacted strongly against Mr Trump’s tariffs, saying his country would impose 25% tariffs on $155bn Canadian dollars (£85.9bn) of US goods in response.
He added that the move would split the two countries apart, and urged Canadians to choose domestic products rather than American ones.
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Tariffs against Canada ‘will put US jobs at risk’
Mexican President Ms Sheinbaum posted on X on Sunday to say she had ordered her economy minister to implement tariff and non-tariff measures to defend Mexico’s interests.
She said her government “categorically rejects” the claim that it has “alliances with criminal organisations” and called on the White House to “fight the sale of drugs on the streets of their major cities”.
A day later, she posted saying she and Mr Trump had a “good conversation” and “reached a series of agreements”.
These agreements include Mexico sending 10,000 troops to the border to “prevent drug trafficking from Mexico to the United States, particularly fentanyl”.
Mr Trump responded to the agreement with Ms Sheinbaum, saying negotiations between the two will be ongoing to try and achieve a “deal”.
Meanwhile, China has claimed the US action violates World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules, and vowed to bring a case before the body that governs global commerce.
It also threatened to take “necessary counter-measures to defend its legitimate rights and interests”.
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Mexico responds to Trump’s tariffs
A spokesperson for theUK government reiterated that the US is an “indispensable ally” and one of the country’s “closest trading partners”.
They added that the trading relationship was “fair and balanced”, after Mr Trump criticised the UK, saying it was “out of line”.
European Union (EU) leaders have also taken a strong stance against looming US tariffs.
Kaja Kallas, the chief of foreign policy for the bloc, said there were no winners in a trade war, and if the US and Europe started one “then the one laughing on the side is China”.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz added that the EU is strong enough to “respond to tariffs with our own tariffs”, while French President Emmanuel Macron said declarations by the US were pushing Europe to be “stronger and more united”.
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EU can react with its own tariffs
What’s the history of trade wars?
Imposing tariffs is not new to Mr Trump, or the US for that matter.
During his first term in the White House, he imposed higher levies on China and Vietnam.
In 2018, he imposed 25% tariffs on imported steel and 10% on imported aluminium from most countries, a response to what he said was the unfair impact of Chinese steel driving down prices and negatively affecting the US steel industry.
China then hit back with retaliatory tariffs on US imports, including 15% on 120 American products such as fruits, nuts, wine and steel pipes and a 25% tariff on US pork and recycled aluminium.
Before that, democrat Jimmy Carter went so far as to completely ban the sale of wheat to Russia, which remained in effect until Ronald Reagan ended it in 1981.
In 2019, Mr Trump also used the threat of tariffs as leverage to persuade Mexico to crack down on migrants crossing Mexican territory on their way to the US.
A study by economists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Zurich, Harvard and the World Bank concluded that Mr Trump’s tariffs the first time around failed to restore jobs to the American heartland.
The tariffs “neither raised nor lowered US employment” when they were supposed to protect jobs, according to Sky News’ US partner network NBC News.
A man who staged public burnings of the Koran in Sweden has been found guilty of hate crimes, five days after his co-defendant was shot dead.
Salwan Najem, a 50-year-old Swedish citizen, was given a suspended sentence and fined 4,000 crowns (£289) over the Koran burnings and derogatory comments he made about Muslims in the 2023 incidents.
His actions sparked unrest and anger towards Sweden in Muslim countries.
His fellow campaigner, Iraqi refugee Salwan Momika, 38, was shot dead last week on the day he had been due to receive his verdict in a parallel case.
Five people were detained over the killing but later released.
Swedish police said on the day after the shooting on 29 January that Momika was shot dead in a house in Sodertalje, a town near Stockholm. The case against Momika was subsequently dismissed.
Sweden’s prime minister expressed concern the shooting may be linked to a foreign power.
Burning the Koran is seen by Muslims as a blasphemous act because they consider it the literal word of God.
The Stockholm district court said Sweden had extensive free speech rights and that followers of a religion must accept that they would sometimes feel offended, but that Najem and Momika had “by a wide margin” overstepped the mark for reasonable and factual religious criticism.
The court said the Koran did not have any special protection just because it was a holy scripture for Muslims and that there could be cases where burning was not considered a hate crime.
Najem was found guilty of hate crimes for “having expressed contempt for the Muslim ethnic group because of their religious beliefs on four occasions”, the court said.
Najem’s lawyer has said he would be appealing against the verdict.
The father of an 18-year-old Briton who died on the frontline in Ukraine has described how attending his son’s funeral “was the most difficult thing I have ever done”.
James Wilton, from Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, had just finished college when he decided he wanted to go to Ukraine as a volunteer fighter to help fend off Russia’s land, air and sea invasion of its smaller neighbour.
He was killed by a drone in July as he crossed open ground while carrying a heavy pack on his back. His friend, an American volunteer named Jason, tried to save him but was unable to.
James’s father, Graham Wilton, said his son had “only just turned 18” when he decided he wanted to go to Ukraine, where the war with Russia has been raging on for almost three years.
As he paid tribute to the “polite, likeable young man”, Mr Wilton said the teenager was resolved to go despite his mother and sisters being “dead set against him going”.
‘Some of the best days of his life’
Mr Wilton said his son “made it clear” that joining the fight in Ukraine was what he wanted, so he “did everything I possibly could to make sure he knew exactly what was involved and that he could be fully prepared for what may lay ahead”.
Mr Wilton said James, who “never really had a bad word to say about anyone or anything”, spent three months in Ukraine where he received combat training, and he described them as “some of the best days of his life”.
He said: “Unfortunately it was not to be and I guess you can never fully prepare for what happens on the battlefield.
“I thank Jason for his bravery in trying to save James in a bad moment and for getting him off the battlefield, even if it was in vain.”
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Jason told The Sun newspaper how they were crossing open ground, 20m apart, when James froze after seeing a Russian drone above them.
While they tried to run for cover, weighed down with backpacks, two more drones appeared and James was fatally wounded by one of them.
When Jason then went back to help the teenager, one of the drones hovered above him and he thought he was about to die as well, but it flew off without attacking him.
Jason was subsequently badly injured by a mine.
Speaking of his son’s funeral in Ukraine, Mr Wilton said: “This was the most difficult thing I have ever done.
“I spent two weeks in Kyiv and [with] James’ comrades and friends and it was a very emotional trip.
“I made some friends for life in James’ fellow soldiers and wish them all well.”