Archive

Neutrinos 101

Learn more about the invisible particles constantly streaming through us all.

Illustration: A scientist studies the forms before her without realizing the forms behind her

03/07/23

Do hidden influences give neutrinos their tiny mass?

The quest to understand the small mass of neutrinos is also a quest to discover new particles.

Illustration of a person measuring a "Supernova" car with a measuring tape

01/24/23

Ways to weigh a neutrino

For decades scientists have tried to find a way to measure the mass of the lightest matter particle known to exist. Three new approaches now have a chance to succeed.

Illustration of a scientist holding a bunch of balloons, one of which is different from the others

08/04/22

Why aren’t neutrinos adding up?

Physicists take on the mystery of the missing (and extra) neutrinos.

Illustration: Neutrinos revealed in particle physics advent calendar with scientists eyeing another possibility

08/17/21

The search for the sterile neutrino

Back when it was theorized, scientists weren’t sure they would ever detect the neutrino; now they’re searching for a version of the particle that could be even more elusive.

05/13/21

Which neutrino is the heaviest?

The question may seem simple, but physicists don’t yet know the answer. New measurements aim to change that.

The LBNF beamline will use a one-megawatt capable focusing horn to direct the charged particles that become neutrinos.

11/13/19

How do you make the world’s most powerful neutrino beam?

DUNE will need lots of neutrinos—and to make them, scientists and engineers will use extreme versions of some common sounding ingredients: magnets and pencil lead.

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08/01/06

Into a new world of physics and symmetry

The worldwide particle physics community is about to sail on a voyage into a New World of discovery. The Large Hadron Collider, a multi-billion-dollar particle collider that will begin operations in Europe in 2007, will take us into new realms of energy, space, time, and symmetry.

05/01/06

K2Ks first neutrinos

The neutrino experiment K2K (KEK to Kamioka) collaboration shares a logbook with Super-Kamiokande scientists at its far detector site 250 kilometers from KEK in Tsukuba.

05/01/06

Art meets science at Super-K detector

At first glance, it seems to be another example of soulless high technology—its very name, photomultiplier tube, is devoid of poetry.

05/01/06

The rise of HEP in Korea

Forty years ago, Korea was a poor country with low per capita income, considered a developing nation by the rest of the world. Things have changed–enormously. Today, Korea is an industrial powerhouse; its 50 million citizens are recognized for the production of cars and electronic goods.

05/01/06

Hesheng Chen: Golden opportunities in China

Although collaborations are still modest, golden physics opportunities exist in China, such as the BESIII experiment at BEPC-II (the upgraded Beijing Electron-Positron Collider) and the Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino Experiment.

04/01/06

Mel Shochet: The new HEPAP

We are at a time of extraordinary scientific opportunity, when the prospect for making major advances in elementary particle physics is greater than it has been in at least three decades.

04/01/06

24/7: Labs that never sleep

Here they measure the time not in minutes or hours. Instead they think in terms of how many antiprotons are ready to stack and how soon the Tevatron will be ready to accept new beam. Or how fast they need to fix something, any time of the day or night. Or how long they can stay awake.

04/01/06

HEPAP redux

A newly structured High Energy Physics Advisory Panel met in Washington, DC, to provide advice to the Department of Energy and National Science Foundation and to hear science policy-makers’ responses to the President’s budget request.

04/01/06

Engineering feats

Sometimes it takes the most impressive equipment in the world to find the smallest, most easily overlooked particles in the universe. Fermilab's Neutrinos at the Main Injector (NuMI) project is a perfect example.

03/01/06

Melissa Alexander: The beauty of Super-K

Recently I discovered that one of the most beautiful expressions of Japanese craftsmanship is neither a vase in a Tokyo museum nor a carving in a Kyoto temple. Instead, it rests deep inside a mountain in the Japanese Alps.

02/01/06

Supernova 1987A

Upon arriving for work at the laboratory of Masatoshi Koshiba at the University of Tokyo, Yoji Totsuka handed me a fax telling of a supernova in the Large Magellanic Cloud, picked up by optical telescopes.

02/01/06

Challenges

Particle physics has been confronted with serious challenges in recent years, especially for the operation of colliders. Yet 2006 promises to be a great year for research in particle physics as well as photon science, and many exciting projects are underway.

01/01/06

NOvA: A neutrino appearance expirement

Deep in the woods of Minnesota, close to the Canadian border, particle physicists hope to construct the next neutrino experiment on a secluded piece of land, fit for studying a lightweight particle that was, itself, once ignored.

01/01/06

Neutrinos: a gateway to new physics

Nature provides three kinds of neutrinos. In the last ten years, physicists have gathered increasingly strong evidence for neutrino oscillations, the transformation of one kind of neutrino into another one.

09/01/05

Robin Staffin: Optimizing US high-energy physics

Whenever I have met with high-energy physicists in recent months, conversation has always turned to the charge to the High Energy Physics Advisory Panel subpanel known as P5, the Particle Physics Project Prioritization Panel, to consider the future of the two biggest US accelerator-based programs

08/01/05

Secret color code

Thank you for a charming issue on neutrinos (May 2005). The use of jelly beans of different colors to convey the notion of the various flavors of neutrino is very sweet and engaging.