A futuristic underground observatory deep under a granite hill in Southern China is sniffing out the secrets of the universe. The observatory has been built with the sole purporse of detecting neutrinos, tiny cosmic particles with a mind-blowlingly small mass.
Scientists do not know what these “ghost particles” are or how they work. However they hope this $300 million lab will be able to answer questions aboutt neutrinos that are significant to understanding the building blocks of the universe.
These tiny cosmic particles date back to the Big Bang and trillions of them zoom through our bodies every second and spew from stars like our sun. In observatories, they stream out when atoms collide in a particle accelerator.
While there is no way to spit these tiny sparticles, scientists measure what happens when they collide with other matter. During the collision neutrinos produce flashes of light or charged particles. Since neutrinos colliding into other particles is a rare phenomenon, physicists have to think out of the box to increase their chances of catching a collision.
This is where the Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory comes in.
Built in Kaiping, China, the detector was in construction over nine years. It is located 2,300ft (700m) underground which protects it from cosmic rays and radiation which could through off its ability to detect neutrinos. Its orb-shaped structure has liquid designed to emit light when neutrinos pass through it.
The tiny cosmic particles switch between three “flavors” as they speed through space. Scientists are on a mission to rank the neutrinos from lightest to heaviest.
‘We are going to know the hierarchy of the neutrino mass,’ Wang Yifang, from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, told The Times.
‘And by knowing this we can build up the model for particle physics, for neutrinos, for cosmology.’
Sensing these subtle shifts in the already evasive particles will be a challenge, said Kate Scholberg, a physicist at Duke University. Scholberg is not involved in the project.
‘It´s actually a very daring thing to even go after it,’ she said.
It will take six years to generate the required 100,000 “flashes” that will allow for readings that are statistically significant.
Japan’s Hyper–Kamiokande and he Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment based in the United States are two similar neutrino detectors under construction.
While these mind-blowing particles barely interact with other particles, they have been around since the beginning of time. Studying them can clue scientists into how the universe evolved and expanded billions of years ago.
‘They’re part of the big picture,’ Professor Scholberg said.