Mass of neutrinos

1999/05/01 Elhuyar Zientzia Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria

• Fisika

Do subatomic particles called neutrinos have mass? It seems they are, but they are not sure. Therefore, researchers from the Fermi National Laboratory with Accelerator in Chicago will launch neutrino jets to the underground building enabled for this in Minnesota. If the characteristics of neutrinos change along the way, physicists believe they have mass. Affirming this, neutrinos would be the most "light" particles we know and besides knowing the proportion of the universe, it will allow us to know the electromagnetism and the forces of atomic nuclei.

Only neutrinos arrived from space so far have been analyzed, but not very adequately. They are known to have no charge, so they can go through matter without interacting with it. During the experiment, for 9 months, every 1.9 seconds will emit constant pulses of 300 trillion neutrinos crossing a 700 km plot and directing them to an old mine.