Science & Technology

Scientists puzzled by mysterious signals coming from Antarctic ice

By T.K. Randall
June 16, 2025 ·  8 comments

Image: Antarctica - Petermann Island (illustrative)
Credit: W. Bulach / CC BY-SA 4.0 (adapted) Something strange seems to be emanating from the depths of the Antarctic ice - that is, at least, according to readings recently obtained by a mobile cosmic particle detector.

Known as the Antarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna (ANITA) experiment, the project consists of multiple instruments designed to pick up radio waves from cosmic rays hitting Earth's atmosphere.

In a strange twist, however, rather than reflecting off the ice as expected, these newly detected signals appear to be coming from beneath it - something that shouldn't be possible based on our current understanding of particle physics.

"The radio waves that we detected were at really steep angles, like 30 degrees below the surface of the ice," said Stephanie Wissel, associate professor of physics, astronomy and astrophysics.

This means that the signals would have had to pass through thousands of miles of rock before reaching the detector, a journey that would have almost certainly rendered them undetectable.So how could the signals have taken this route and still have been picked up by the detector ?

"It's an interesting problem because we still don't actually have an explanation for what those anomalies are, but what we do know is that they're most likely not representing neutrinos," said Wissel.

Neutrinos, which are typically emitted by high-energy sources, are notoriously difficult to detect.

This has meant that scientists have had to come up with novel new ways of picking them up.

"If we detect them, it means they have traveled all this way without interacting with anything else," said Wissel. "We could be detecting a neutrino coming from the edge of the observable universe."

Source: Phys.org | Comments (8)

Tags: Antarctica