Located 700 meters Underground near the town of Jiangmen in southern China, a giant sphere-35 meter diameter and filled with more than 20,000 tons of liquid – has just started the mission that will last for decades. This is Juno, the Underground Observatory Jiangmen, a new, great experiment that studies some of the most valuable and elusive particles known for science.
Neutrino are the most ordinary particle in space with a mass. They are thorough particles, which means they are not broken down into less components, which makes them very small and very easy. They also have zero electric charge; They are neutral – hence their name. All this means that they don’t often communicate with another matter, they come in contact, and they can go through it without affecting him, making them make it difficult. For this reason, they are sometimes called “ghost particles”.
They also have the opportunity to change (or “oscillates”) between three different forms, also known as “tastes”: electron, mu and tau. (Please note that non-determined electron-flavored from electrons; the latter are a different type of fundamental particle, with negative charges.)
The fact that neutrinos of oscillate has proven physicists of Takaaki Kajita and Arthur Bruce McDonald. In two separate experiments, they noticed that neutrisons with the aroma of the electrons are oscillated in neutrins with aromatic mu- and tau. As a result, they showed that these particles have mass and that the mass of every taste is different. They won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2015. Years.
Explainer on Neutrino oscillations from the Fermi National Accelerator laboratory.
But it is important, but still an unknown fact is how these masses are ordered – which of the three flavors has the highest mass, and which least. If physicists had a better understanding of the neutrine mass, it could help better describe the behavior and evolution of the universe. This is coming to Juno.
A unique experiment
Neutrins cannot be seen with conventional particle detectors. Instead, scientists must seek rare signs that communicate with another matter – and that is what Junovo is a giant sphere are you? It is called a scintillator, is filled with a sensitive internal fluid consisting of solvents and two fluorescent compounds. If neutrino passes through that question communicates with this, the flash of light will produce. The liquid environment is a massive stainless steel grille that supports a huge series of highly sensitive light sensors, named photomultiplic pipes, capable of detecting even one photon produced by interaction between neutrin and liquids, and in a measurable power.
“The Juno experiment picks up his predecessors, with the difference that he is much bigger,” says Gioacchino Ranucci, Deputy Chief of Experiment and the former Borexino Boss, another neutrino-hunting experiment. One of the main features of June, Ranucci explains, whether Juno can “see” and neutrinos and their antimatter colleagues: antinetrinos. The first ones are usually produced in the Earth’s atmosphere or decaying radioactive materials in the Earth’s crust, or are otherwise coming from the universe, which come from stars, black holes, supernovae, or even a large burst. Antinetrinos, however, are artificially produced, in this case two nuclear power plants located near the detector.
“While spreading, neutrinos and antinetrines are still being educated, transferring each other,” Ranucci says. Juno will be able to capture all these signals, explains, showing how they oscillating “, with precision never before achieving.”
