Neutrinos Have No Business Being This Freaking Small

Physicists have a new limit on how big neutrino can be – one of the smallest familiar particles in the universe – a limit that looks as large as the black hole comparing other subtormal particles.

A new result Published In the science of science this week, researchers have placed a new higher limit on the mass of these IT-Bitts particles: 0.45 electron volts (EV). In the context, it is less than a million percent of the mass of an electron, which is relatively watching at Gargantuan 511,000 EV. So, yes – neutrinos Ridiculously Lightweight

Trillions Neutrino passes through your body every second but they are so small and so weakly interact that you don’t feel anything.

Neutrino is the only known primary particle whose mass remains unknown, though these initial particles have questions about how good it is Interact with the standard modelThe Determining the mass of neutrino with accuracy can give deep insight into the laws of the universe. Getting their mass from neutrinos Higgs bosonDo other particles like? Or have some completely new process to play?

Carlosuru Triatium neutrino tests or caatrin, a 75-foot tall (23-meter long) blimp-shaped vacuum chamber. Scientists observe the radioactive erosion of the tritium inside the vacuum chamber; With the loss of tritium, it sprinkle the electron and antinutrino. Researchers cannot directly measure antinutrinos (they ghost it with substances such as substances) but they can study (and do) left electrons to create launches about the mass of missing particles.

After analyzing the 259 -day data, the Katrin Team Neutrino mass (0.8 EV) was able to cut their previous best estimate for about half. But they are not finished; When the whole one thousand days of dataset is shrinking, the team hopes that this mass limit will reduce 0.3 EV, even 0.2 EVO.

There are still a lot of strategies in neutrinos. As physicist Susan Martens from Max Planck Institute Keeps itThe measure of Catrin cooperation can be a backdoor in new physics – and probably the better idea of ​​how the initial universe developed.

In February, a separate team has detected The most powerful neutrino (Called “ghost particles” for their delusional nature) The Mediterranean is deep, it indicates that the particles and the cosmic microwave can be emitted by interaction in the background – the oldest visible light in the universe.

If the neutrino mass was even higher – almost an electronvolt – could find the original value of Catrin. However, as the particle is so small, a new and advanced detector – Catrin ++ – may need to measure its mass accuracy.

A few things in life are sure, but the things we reliably expect to expect is death, tax and neutrino smaller than ever.