By: Chloe Kwon

Ghostly particles, know as Neutrinos, are giving us a new view of the Milky Way.

Neutrinos are subatomic particles that have little mass and no electric charge. They are sometimes called “ghost particles.” This is because they can easily zip through gas, dust and even stars without a trace. The real origin of this mysterious particle is still unknown.

Neutrino particle researchers found the first of these particles around the Milky Way. They used the moving Neutrino particles to make a vast new image of the Milky Way. Previously, only a few Neutrinos have been traced back to their potential birth. They came all the way from outside the Milky Way. Two appeared to have come from black holes shredding their companion stars. Others came from a type of galaxy called a blazar.

It’s clear now that researchers are spotting neutrinos from both inside and outside our galaxy, says Kate Scholberg. She’s a physicist at Duke University in Durham, N.C., who did not take part in the new mapping project. “There’s so much more to learn,” she says. “It can be tremendous fun to figure out how to see the universe with neutrino eyes.”

These neutrino “eyes” may be the future of telescopes.

Some telescopes rely on visible light. Others pick up X-rays, Gamma rays or the charged particles that make up cosmic rays. All those types of light can be deflected or absorbed as they travel through space. Neutrinos are different though, as they can cross huge expanses without being deflected. This allows the particles to tell us about very distant objects.