A team led by physicists from the University of California, Irvine, discovered neutrinos similar to those in the cosmos, but created by a particle collider. The finding promises to deepen our understanding of subatomic particles, which were first detected in 1956 and play a key role in the process that causes stars to burn up.
The work could also shed light around cosmic neutrinos traveling great distances and colliding with Earth, providing a window into distant parts of the universe.
It is the most recent result of the Forward Search Experiment (Faser), a particle detector designed and built by an international group of physicists and installed at the European Council for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva, Switzerland. There, it detects particles produced by the Large Hadron Collider of that institution.
“We have discovered neutrinos from a completely new source, particle colliders, in which two beams of particles collide with each other at extremely high energy,” explained Jonathan Feng, a particle physicist at the University of California at Irvine and co-spokesperson for the Collaboration. Faser, who initiated the project that involves more than 80 researchers from around twenty partner institutions.
The results were announced at the 57th Rencontres de Moriond Electroweak Interactions and Unified Theories conference in Italy. Co-discovered nearly 70 years ago by the late Nobel laureate physicist Frederick Reines of the University of California at Irvine, neutrinos are the most abundant particles in the cosmos and “were very important in establishing the standard model of the physics of particles,” explained Jamie Boyd, a particle physicist at CERN and a co-spokesperson for Faser.
Since their discovery, most neutrinos studied by physicists have been low-energy, but those detected by Faser are the highest energy ever produced in a laboratory and are similar to those found when deep-space particles trigger showers. of dramatic particles in the atmosphere. “They can tell us about deep space in a way that we can’t learn in any other way,” he added.
Beyond neutrinos, one of Faser’s other main goals is to help identify the particles that make up dark matter, which physicists believe comprises most of the matter in the universe but have never directly observed. Faser has yet to find any signs of dark matter, but with the Large Hadron Collider set to start a new round of particle collisions in a few months, the detector is also there to record any that turn up.
Chinese giant telescope
Meanwhile, in China, researchers from the Institute of High Energy Physics of the Academy of Sciences are working on a model for a giant telescope in order to observe neutrinos from the depths of seas or lakes. The facility, designed to have a volume of about 30 cubic kilometers, will be submerged to a depth of more than one kilometer, said Chen Mingjun, principal investigator of the project.
Passing through the water, the neutrinos will collide with the atomic nucleus and produce secondary particles, emitting light signals that can be picked up by underwater detectors. Chen believes that the origin of this mysterious space radiation could be traced.
The reason why scientists deploy the telescope in the depths of the water is related to the fact that sunlight does not penetrate the darkness, allowing the absence of fish or microorganisms.
Among the challenges facing the team is developing detectors to meet the higher waterproofing requirements, as well as the high costs of underwater equipment and operations.
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