The New York Times reports:

From ghostlike particles, astrophysicists have pieced together a new map of the galaxy we live in.

For now, that map of the Milky Way is blurry and incomplete. But as more data is gathered, it will become clearer and will help illuminate galactic convulsions like the expanding remnants of exploded stars, providing clues to mysteries that are difficult to solve with only observations from conventional telescopes.

“This is the first time we’ve seen our own galaxy in anything other than light,” said Naoko Kurahashi Neilson, a professor of physics at Drexel University in Philadelphia who came up with the idea that a new view of the galaxy could be gleaned from particles known as neutrinos.

Dr. Kurahashi Neilson and the more than 350 other scientists who collaborate on analyzing data from a neutrino detector at the South Pole reported their findings in a paper published on Thursday in the journal Science.

“This is at last really the beginning of neutrino astronomy,” said John G. Learned, a physicist at the University of Hawaii who was not involved with the research. [Continue reading…]