News Archive 2018 / 2019

• Baikal GVD: cluster 4 and 5 installed

During this year’s Baikal winter campaign, two new clusters have been added to the existing three. GVD now comprises 1440 optical modules. All 576 OMs of the two new clusters are operating - a wonderful success for the Baikal team and an important step for the GNN community.

• IceCube neutrinos provide first evidence for blazars as a source of cosmic rays

At July 12, 2018, SCIENCE has published two papers which herald a new phase of neutrino and multi-messenger astronomy. The findings of these papers provide, for the first time, evidence for a known blazar as a source of high-energy neutrinos. The neutrinos have been detected by the neutrino observatory IceCube at the South Pole. The blazar (an active galaxy with a jet pointing to the Earth) is known as TXS 0506+056. Observations from radio wavelengths to very high-energy gamma rays provide a complete picture of the flaring source.

The results obtained with IceCube and with the multi-wavelength campaign bolster the motivation of neutrino astronomers to build the planned detectors with 2-5 times better sensitivity: KM3NeT in the Mediterranean Sea, the Gigaton Volume Detector GVD in Lake Baikal (both already under construction) and IceCube-Gen2 at the South Pole (to be built in the 2020s).  In addition, they boldly demonstrate the power of the emerging field of multi-messenger astronomy!