This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: If you wanted a Nobel Prize, you would do well to study neutrinos. To date, the Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded five times to research related to neutrino detection and discovery.
This year, Francis Halzen earned the Nobel "for decisive contributions to the IceCube Neutrino Observatory and the discovery of high-energy neutrinos of astrophysical origin." University of California San Diego distinguished professor of physics George Fuller specializes in theoretical nuclear and elementary particle astrophysics and cosmology and worked with Halzen on an early paper on IceCube. He is uniquely positioned to answer two questions: What are neutrinos? And how does an icy observatory at the South Pole help us learn about them?
Neutrinos are elementary particles, meaning they cannot be broken into smaller components, as far as we know. There are three neutrino "flavors": electron, muon and tau. Unlike some other elementary particles, neutrinos have no electric charge.
Although they have mass, they are incredibly light—maybe 10 million times lighter than an electron. Scientists don't actually know the mass of neutrinos, and they don't know where the mass comes from either. Because they interact weakly with matter, they can move through space nearly at the speed of light.
Some come from the sun, others from deep space, others from sources unknown. They zoom invisibly through space in numbers hard to comprehend. The current estimate is 10⁸⁹, meaning there are one billion neutrinos for every atom in the universe.
"Neutrinos are truly ghostlike particles," stated Fuller. How do we even know they exist or where they are?" We know they exist because neutrinos can be scattered and absorbed through the weak interaction—so-called because it is about 20 orders of magnitude weaker than electromagnetism. This weak interaction does allow for their detection, but makes it almost impossible to do so without going to extraordinary measures.
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