neutrinos

11.26.09

Radio Telescopes Turn The Moon Into World's Largest Neutrino Detector

By Stuart Fox Posted 08.06.2009 at 3:14 pm 1 Comment

Neutrinos, the infinitesimally small particles so faint physicists used to call them "the ghost particle," have driven scientists to construct immense underground facilities simply to catch a glimpse of a single one. Now, with even the most massive detectors failing to trap certain high-energy neutrinos, astronomers have turned to a larger filter: the Moon.

[ Read Full Story ]

READ MORE ABOUT > Holland, moon, neutrino, neutrinos, radio telescopes, science news, Telescopes, very large array

New Theory Postulates Galaxy-Sized Neutrinos, Expanding Since the Beginning of Time

And these are the massive tanks used to detect them

By Stuart Fox Posted 06.03.2009 at 1:40 pm 5 Comments

Irvine-Michigan-Brookhaven Detector: Located in an abandoned salt mine, this detector contains 2.5 million gallons of ulta-pure water. To give an idea of the scale of the tank, the object in the middle of the tank is a diver. Joe Stancampiano via National Geographic

Of all the subatomic particles that make up matter, neutrinos are the smallest. So small, in fact, that a billion neutrinos pass through your body every second without hitting a single atom. However, a new study postulates that some ancient neutrinos, born shortly after the Big Bang, may now be as large as some galaxies.

[ Read Full Story ]

READ MORE ABOUT > big bang, cosmology, neutrinos, particle physics, space, the universe