First observations of neutrinos at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider

Neutrinos (along with photons) are the most abundant particles in the universe. However, scientists do not know much about them. This is because these particles interact very weakly with matter and are extremely difficult to study. So faint that they are often referred to as “ghost particles”.

Neutrino

Neutrinos have an amazing penetrating ability. For example, a planet like Earth is almost no obstacle to them. Scientists estimate that 65 billion neutrinos pass through one square centimeter of our planet’s surface and hit the sun every second. These particles in large quantities and every second penetrate our bodies, and we usually have no idea about them.

The first speculation about the existence of neutrinos appeared in the 1930s, but the first experimental observations of them occurred almost a quarter of a century later. In the course of the research, it was discovered that there are at least three types of these particles – the electron, muon and tau neutrinos, and each of them has its counterpart in the world of antimatter, that is, each has its own antiparticle. These particles have no electrical charge and are produced in nuclear reactions inside stars as well as in reactors on Earth.

Although they are among the most abundant particles in the universe, observing them so far has proven challenging because the probability of them interacting with other matter is extremely low. To detect neutrinos, physicists use advanced detectors and equipment to study known neutrino sources. Their efforts eventually led to the detection of neutrinos from the sun, cosmic rays, supernovae and other cosmic bodies, as well as from nuclear reactors.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

You May Also Like

The Euclid Space Telescope has discovered hundreds of billions of orphan stars. Where did they come from?

A good example of the capabilities of the Euclid Telescope is that…

Martian meteorites look suspicious. Something doesn’t add up here

Such rocks, after millions of years of travel in interplanetary space, sometimes…

You can see the sections! Do you still see them on the map of Poland?

What exactly is this saying and why does it not necessarily apply…

Second by second, they reenacted the sinking of the Titanic. The video has been viewed more than 90 million times.

What is the real tragedy of the Titanic? On one YouTube channel,…