NEW YORK (AP) – Scientists operating a huge underground detector designed to study some of the universe’s most elusive particles announced their first major findings on Wednesday.
The Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO) in China began gathering data in August to investigate neutrinos—tiny particles that have existed since the Big Bang.
Invisible Particles Passing Through Us Undetected
Trillions of neutrinos pass through our bodies every second without causing any harm. Despite their abundance, they are extremely difficult to detect because they have almost no mass.
The JUNO collaboration presented its first results based on two months of observations, including some of the most accurate measurements yet of how neutrinos transform among their three different types, or flavors, while traveling through space.
“These findings make me even more excited about what future discoveries may bring,” said physicist Kate Scholberg of Duke University, who was not involved in the study.
The spherical JUNO detector sits about 2,297 feet (700 meters) beneath the Earth’s surface. It studies antineutrinos produced by reactions occurring within two nearby nuclear power stations.
Antineutrinos are similarly enigmatic particles, essentially the counterparts of neutrinos, and studying them helps scientists better understand how neutrinos behave.
When antineutrinos interact with particles inside the detector, they create brief flashes of light.
Researchers hope the experiment will shed light on the long-standing question of the masses of different neutrino types.
Invisible Particles Passing Through Us Undetected
They suspect that two neutrino flavors have similar masses while the third is different, but it remains unclear whether the pair is heavier and the third lighter, or the reverse.
However, they demonstrate the detector’s capabilities and show that it “will be able to probe the subtle variations” that distinguish neutrino types and their masses, said study co-author Liangjian Wen, a member of the JUNO team.
Japan’s Hyper-Kamiokande and the U.S.-based Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment are two active, next-generation neutrino projects that will begin collecting data within the next decade, allowing them to independently verify the findings from the Chinese detector using different experimental methods.
Read the original article on: sciencealert
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