The satisfaction of finding something completely unique is one of the things that drives many
scientists to their career.
As a result, scientists at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, have reactivated
their Cosmic Cannon, the Large Hadron Collider.
Imagine the scientific community's excitement when a Large Hadron Collider suddenly uncovered
something altogether new.
The new object is so enigmatic that some scientists have dubbed it a ghost.
What has the collider just discovered?
Why was it kept hidden for so long?
Join us as we investigate the incredible discovery made by CERN researchers that alters everything.
The Large Hadron Collider has revealed the precise nature of these particles, as well
as other intriguing details.
But what exactly is the Large Hadron Collider?
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world's largest and most powerful particle accelerator.
It is housed in CERN, the European particle physics laboratory in Switzerland.
After three years of maintenance and modifications, the LHC reopened on April 22, 2022.
Run 3 began on July 5, a day after the tenth anniversary of the discovery of the Higgs
boson.
The LHC is used by scientists to put theoretical predictions in particle physics to the test,
notably those linked with the "Standard Model" While the Standard Model can explain practically
all particle physics discoveries, several problems remain unresolved, such as what dark
matter and dark energy are.
Why is matter more abundant than antimatter?
The LHC is intended to assist in answering such topics.
If you see a news story about unusual new subatomic particles, chances are they were
discovered at CERN.
In January 2022, CERN scientists claimed "evidence of X particles in the quark-gluon plasma produced
in the Large Hadron Collider."
The startling reality is that CERN succeeded in replicating a scenario that hasn't occurred
naturally since a few microseconds after the Big Bang.
The finding of the Higgs boson in 2012 was the LHC's crowning achievement.
Although it is commonly referred to as the "God particle" it is not as wonderful as the
moniker suggests.
It was significant since it was the last prediction of the Standard Model that had yet to be proved.
However, the Higgs boson is far from the LHC's lone discovery.
The LHC has also discovered roughly 60 previously unrecognized hadrons, which are complex particles
made up of diverse combinations of quarks, according to the science journal CERN Courier.
Nonetheless, all of those new particles remain inside the confines of the Standard Model,
which the LHC has struggled to exceed, much to the dismay of the many scientists who have
spent their lives researching on alternative ideas.
The first tempting signs that a breakthrough was on the way came in 2021, when LHC data
analysis revealed patterns of activity that indicated modest but distinct deviations from
the Standard Model.
Surprisingly, CERN intends to invest $23 billion on the construction of a new 100-kilometer-long
super collider.
Interesting fact: The LHC's annual energy consumption is equivalent to one-third of
the electricity consumed by families in the Canton of Geneva.
However, the numerous discoveries associated with the LHC have justified the expenditure.
The discovery of ghost particles known as neutrinos is one such achievement.
The joint efforts of CERN's Forward Search Experiments enabled this momentous accomplishment.
Neutrinos are some of nature's most mysterious particles, capable of travelling through the
Earth as if it didn't exist.
Neutrinos, on the other hand, are the most prevalent particle in the universe.
Every second, nearly 100 trillion neutrinos travel absolutely harmlessly through your
body.
The fact that neutrinos do not interact with other particles very frequently makes detecting
them difficult, but this does not imply that they never interact – the likelihood that
any individual neutrino will interact with another particle is just very low.
But what are neutrinos, and why are they making such a fuss?
Neutrinos have no charge; their name indicates that they are neutral.
While the mass of neutrinos has yet to be properly calculated, we know it must be exceptionally
small.
Scientists at the Karlsruhe Tritium Neutrino Experiment in Germany were able to determine
the top limit of neutrino mass to be 0.8 electronvolts, or eV.
(An electronvolt is the amount of kinetic energy gained by an electron when it is accelerated
by a one-volt potential difference.)
While measuring mass with energy units may appear strange at first, Albert Einstein demonstrated
how mass and energy are two sides of the same coin (as described by his famous equation,
E = mc2), and extremely small particle masses are often given in eV because the kilogram
conversion is so small (0.8eV is about 1.4 x 10-36 kg).
To put things into perspective, neutrinos are around 10,000 times less heavy than electrons.
Neutrinos don't interact at all with the strong nuclear force that binds atomic nuclei together,
but they do interact with the weak force that controls radioactive decay.
Ultimately, this is how neutrinos are produced; for instance, the KATRIN experiment determined
the neutrino mass resulting from the decay of tritium isotopes.
Numerous neutrinos were formed in a fraction of a second after the big bang, but many neutrinos
are still produced today.
They form in the nuclei of stars, particle accelerators, and atomic reactors, and they
are also present during supernovas and radioactive decay of substances.
Despite the fact that neutrinos have proven to be a difficult nut to crack for scientists,
physicists believe that neutrinos outnumber protons in the universe by a billion times.
This is due to their ability to remain neutral to the great majority of compounds present
in the universe, allowing billions of them to pass through a square centimeter of your
body undetected.
Most meta-like light beams just pass through them as if they were travelling through a
clear glass.
In contrast to other particles, which may be deformed by interactions with other matter,
neutrinos carry a wealth of information as they travel across space.
The study of neutrinos helps us to have a better understanding of the origins of the
universe.
Neutrinos were found while scientists were striving to unravel the riddle of Beta Decay.
The strange thing about Beta Decay is that it appears to break two fundamental physical
laws: the law of energy conservation and the law of momentum conservation.
They discovered that during Beta Decay, the final particle configuration appeared to have
slightly too little energy, and a proton remained stationary instead of moving in the opposite
direction as the electron.
In 1930, scientist Wolfgang Pauli proposed that an additional particle may escape the
nucleus, bringing the lost energy and momentum with it.
However, Paulie was well aware that the particle he had proposed could not be discovered.
"I've done a terrible thing," he said to a colleague.
"I've postulated a particle that cannot be detected."
Our sun emits a large number of neutrinos, many of which end up bombarding the Earth.
Scientists set up multiple detectors to detect these neutrinos, but their experiments only
detected one-third of the neutrinos expected.
Scientists have been striving to address this problem for many years, but they have been
overlooking one fundamental fact: neutrinos come in three flavors: the ordinary neutrino,
the Muon neutrino, and the Tau neutrino.
As they travel between the Sun and the Earth, neutrinos bounce between these three forms.
This explains why the earliest neutrino experiments, which were only designed to detect one sort
of neutrino, routinely missed two-thirds of the total amount.
The finding made by CERN was the first-time neutrinos were identified within the LHC or
any particle accelerator at all.
The Breakthrough, which opened up a fresh new window for scientists to investigate the
subatomic World, sparked the ensuing excitement.
The capacity to detect neutrinos within the LHC will aid scientists in learning more about
their role in the universe.
Prior to the LHC's discovery of neutrinos, scientists had already trapped neutrinos.
There was the Super Kamiokande detector from Japan, the MiniBooNe detector from Fermilab,
and the Antarctic Ice Cube detector.
Using a method known as Cherenkov radiation, they were all able to detect neutrinos.
This Cherenkov radiation technique operates on the same principle as an aircraft exceeding
the speed of sound, resulting in a Sonic Boom.
The particle is designed to go through a light-slowing medium, leaving behind a faint blue glow that
scientists are seeking for.
Even while these experiments can detect the signals of neutrinos coming from the Sun,
various issues remain.
Scientists, for example, are unable to distinguish the types of high energy neutrinos created
when these particles collide in a conventional particle accelerator.
In order to detect these artificially manufactured neutrinos, scientists from the FASER collaboration
created a new detector dubbed FASERnu.
How does FASERnu work?
The FASERnu is made up of solid metal plates of lead and tungsten with multiple layers
of a substance called emulsion in between them that detects light.
The neutrinos will initially smash with the atomic nuclei in the dense metal plates to
create their particle byproducts.
The subsequent phase is the emulsion, which acts identically to conventional photographic
film.
The emulsion reacts with the neutrino leftovers, imprinting the particles' tracing contours
as they travel through it.
The scientists then create the Emulsion and investigate the particle trails left by the
neutrinos.
Physicists can use this information to establish that some of the marks were caused by these
particles.
This approach even allows scientists to discriminate between the three types of neutrinos discovered.
This demonstrated not only that they had chosen the proper position inside the massive ring
to seek for neutrinos, but also that their new detector was capable of doing so.
However, now that they have a working detector, the researchers are not content and are working
on a larger version of it.
This version will be more sensitive to neutrino detection.
They will also be able to differentiate between neutrinos and antineutrinos, which are neutrinos'
antimatter counterparts.
Are neutrinos Dark Matter?
Dark matter is the elusive substance that many scientists believe can explain the additional
gravity that holds galaxies and galaxy clusters together.
Dark matter cannot be seen and interacts with conventional matter only through gravity.
If it interacts with conventional matter at all, it does so only extremely weakly.
Neutrinos look to be a good fit, but there's a catch: they're not big enough.
Even with innumerable neutrinos filling every nook and crevice of the universe, the three
known neutrino types — electron, muon, and tau — have a maximum energy of 0.8eV, which
is unlikely to account for all dark matter.
Let us know what you think of these ghost particles in the comments section below.