Neutrinos fill the universe. The sun bathes us in them, radioactive decays spray them around, and cosmic rays bombard us with them. And they nearly all miss, because neutrinos hardly ever interact with matter. Detecting them at all takes something special.
Yet they are fascinating. The oscillate between three different types as they move, they may hold the key to why there is more matter than antimatter around, and they may even be Majorana particles.
So it is exciting that the latest, and so far greatest, neutrino experiment has just begun operation, in Fermilab, Chicago, Illinois. And in Ash River, Minnesota, since the beam is more than 800 km long.
Fermilab have made a couple of cool videos to give an idea of the scale of the enterprise, and how it all works. First a time-lapse of the construction:
And then a short video showing you how it all works, with some real neutrino data.
I’m looking forward to their results, after they’ve been running for a while.
Jon Butterworth has written a book about being involved in the discovery of the Higgs boson, Smashing Physics, available here . Some interesting events where you might be able to hear him talk about it etc are listed here. Also, Twitter.
