Here\u2019s what you’ll learn when you read this story:<\/p>\n
The Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO) is on the hunt to determine the mass ordering of neutrino flavors, and its first results show that it\u2019s delivering beyond expectations.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n
First proposed in 2008, JUNO contains a spherical detector filled with 20,000 metric ton of scintillator fluid and 42,000+ photomultipliers capable of detecting a single photon.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n
JUNO is the first of three big neutrino experiments expected to go online this decade, with the others being the Hyper-Kamiokande detector in Japan and the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment in the U.S.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Every second, hundreds of trillions of neutrinos<\/a> produced by the Sun are traveling through your body. The reason we don\u2019t notice this steady stream of quantum particles is because they almost never interact with matter at all, a behavior that has earned them the nickname \u2018ghost particles.\u2019 To give a sense of just how rare it is for a neutrino to interact with a particle, if a collection of these particles traveled through a solid lead wall that was one light-year (5.88 trillion miles) thick, 50 percent of the neutrinos would still escape unscathed<\/a>.<\/p>\n While this is an awe-inspiring fact of the universe, studying these particles has been a big headache for experimental physicists for roughly 90 years. To isolate neutrinos from background noise, detectors designed to find these particles are often located deep underground. They\u2019re also very big\u2014the Kamioka Liquid Scintillator Antineutrino Detector (KamLAND) detector in Gifu, Japan, contains 1,000 tons of liquid scintillator, which is a substance that emits light when absorbing radiation<\/a> (such as a neutrino).<\/p>\n Now, neutrino science is officially entering a new era, as the China\u2019s Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO<\/a>) is up and running. JUNO is the first of three next-generation neutrino experiments to go online this decade\u2014the others being the Hyper-Kamiokande detector in Japan and the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment in the U.S.\u2014and in a new study uploaded to the preprint server arXiv<\/a> (and submitted to the journal Chinese Physics C for peer review), the international collaborators working on the project published JUNO\u2019s first incredible results. The moment has been roughly 17 years in the making.<\/p>\n \u201cBuilding JUNO has been a journey of extraordinary challenges,\u201d JUNO chief engineer Xiaoyan Ma told the Cern Courier<\/a>. \u201cIt demanded not only new ideas and technologies, but also years of careful planning, testing and perseverance. Meeting the stringent requirements of purity, stability and safety called for the dedication of hundreds of engineers and technicians. Their teamwork and integrity turned a bold design into a functioning detector, ready now to open a new window on the world of neutrinos.\u201d<\/p>\n JUNO is the jumbo-sized successor to Japan\u2019s KamLAND detector, and its 35-meter diameter spherical detector contains an incredible 20,000 metric tons of liquid scintillator\u2014not to mention 43,212 photomultipliers, which are light detectors that can spot even a single photon. This sphere is then placed in a cylindrical pit filled with ultra-pure water<\/a> to filter out particles that might mimic antineutrinos (i.e. cosmic muons). Like most neutrino detectors, JUNO is located 700 meters below ground, and will actually detect reactor antineutrinos produced by the Yangjiang and Taishan nuclear power plants located dozens of miles away. The goal is to detect upwards of 40 to 60 neutrinos per day<\/a>.<\/p>\n JUNO\u2019s primary mission is to determine the mass-hierarchy of the neutrino flavors: electron<\/a>, muon, and tau. While scientists agree these flavors have differing masses, they\u2019re not actually sure which flavor is the lightest. Using data collected from August 26 to November 2 of this year, the researchers have already measured the solar neutrino oscillation parameters with 1.8 times better precision than previous experiments, which bodes well for JUNO\u2019s planned 30-year investigation into the nature of neutrinos.<\/p>\n \u201cAchieving such precision within only two months of operation shows that JUNO is performing exactly as designed,\u201d Yifang Wang, JUNO project manager and spokesperson, said in a press statement<\/a>. \u201cWith this level of accuracy, JUNO will soon determine the neutrino mass ordering, test the three-flavor oscillation framework, and search for new physics<\/a> beyond it.\u201d<\/p>\n Neutrinos have long been described as a \u201cgateway to new physics<\/a>,\u201d and with JUNO up and running\u2014and other experiments<\/a> coming online by the end of the decade\u2014humanity may finally be prepared to step across that scientific threshold.<\/p>\n You Might Also Like<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Here\u2019s what you’ll learn when you read this story: The Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO) is on the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":668657,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3845],"tags":[45295,203729,2122,4741,203731,203730,45296,203727,74,203726,70,16,15,203728],"class_list":{"0":"post-668656","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-physics","8":"tag-deep-underground","9":"tag-hyper-kamiokande","10":"tag-japan","11":"tag-juno","12":"tag-kamioka-liquid-scintillator-antineutrino-detector","13":"tag-liquid-scintillator","14":"tag-neutrino-detector","15":"tag-neutrino-experiments","16":"tag-physics","17":"tag-quantum-particles","18":"tag-science","19":"tag-uk","20":"tag-united-kingdom","21":"tag-xinhua-news-agency"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115824773386123161","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=668656"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668656\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/668657"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=668656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=668656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=668656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}