Scientists detect mysterious radio waves coming from beneath Antarctica's ice
[NYPost] A group of researchers in Antarctica have found strange radio waves coming from below the ice.
According to the results published in the Physical Review Letters, the mysterious radio waves were discovered by the Antarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna (ANITA).
During this experiment, the researchers analyzed signals traveling to Earth using a variety of instruments.
Using balloons to send the instruments up high into the atmosphere, the goal was to gain new understandings of cosmic events throughout the universe.
According to the release, the reason Antarctica was the site of these experiments was due to little to no interference from other radio waves.
However, the researchers found radio waves transmitting from under the ice instead.
Stephanie Wissel, associate professor of physics, astronomy and astrophysics from Penn State, and one of the researchers discussed in a release by the college, revealed they discovered the radio waves while searching for a particle known as neutrinos.
“The radio waves that we detected were at really steep angles, like 30 degrees below the surface of the ice,” Wissel said in the release.
Wissel went on to explain that the radio waves should have been undetectable.
The waves would have had to go through thousands of kilometers of rock and would have been absorbed into the rocks.
She also said in the release that the team of researchers had no answer about how these neutrinos were detected.
According to Wissel, neutrinos are important to the understanding of the universe due to emitted by high-energy sources and are typically hard to detect.
Posted by: Woodrow 2025-06-17 |