The Daya Bay Neutrino Experiment in China is a more modern facility aimed at studying the properties of these ghostly particles.
Nature and Science/Alamy
Immediately after the Big Bang, a large shower of particles was released into space. Since then, they have flooded the universe with their ancient secrets. We’d love to catch them, but these messengers are elusive. They pass through matter. 100 trillion of them flow through your body every second, but you don’t realize it.
These ghostly things are neutrinos. These are subatomic particles that we know exist but are very difficult to detect. For example, experiments are being conducted around the world to capture neutrinos emitted from the sun in giant traps buried more than a kilometer underground. However, the neutrinos emitted shortly after the Big Bang have a much lower energy and have so far proven to be completely undetectable.
However, if you can find them, great prizes await. They painted an unprecedented picture of the universe’s first moments, hundreds of thousands of years earlier than we’ve ever seen.
For decades, plans to detect these elusive particles required technologies beyond our imagination. But now things are moving forward and we have suggestions on how we can trap them. But there may be a way to make our detectors race towards them.
all of us…
