A team of scientists observed a high volume of neutrinos passing through the Earth from all angles by identifying them in Antarctic ice.
According to BBC News, authors of a study published in the journal Physical Review Letters recorded the "highest energy" neutrinos in a recent experiment.
"People are ecstatic to see our first observation of neutrino oscillations," Peter Shanahan, of the U.S. Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, said in a press release. "For all the people who worked over the course of a decade on the designing, building, commissioning and operating this experiment, it's beyond gratifying."
Neutrinos are just a rung above nothing - they have nearly no mass, give off a neutral charge, and do not interact with anything - so they are able to go pretty much anywhere in the universe. The researchers believe they can help better understand radioactive activity warming the planet.
"The rapid success of the NOvA team demonstrates a commitment and talent for taking on complex projects to answer the biggest questions in particle physics," Fermilab Director Nigel Lockyer said in the release. "We're glad that the detectors are functioning beautifully and providing quality data that will expand our understanding of the subatomic realm."
The "cosmic neutrino" count in the experiment is also on a record increase, rising from 28 detected in 2013 to 50, a rate that blows by man's fastest particle accelerators.
"This new method gives us muon neutrinos of similar numbers, so our count is up well above 100 now," Francis Halzen, of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told BBC News. "We can reconstruct the muon track to better than half a degree.
"This is totally going to change the astronomy we can do."
