New News of Neutrinos

Scientists are learning more about mysterious particles that penetrate everything in the Cosmos but are almost impossible to find. Almost.

Neutrinos are often thought of as ghost particles, rarely interacting with anything, making detection of these elusive particles astonishingly difficult. Study of these subatomic particles is, in turn, incredibly challenging.

Researchers at the Borexino collaboration now report recording neutrino interactions 53 times, nearly double the previous record. The detector, located 1,400 meters (4,600 feet) beneath the Gran Sasso massif near Rome, could help unwrap secrets of stars, as well as geological processes taking place deep within the Earth.

The Ghost Particle

Neutrinos, as their name implies, are electrically neutral, and they rarely interact with matter. First discovered in materials undergoing beta decay (the transformation of a neutron into a proton, electron, and neutrino), they reach Earth from deep space, as well as from the Sun, and rise up from deep within own planet.

Geoneutrinos, produced during radioactive decay processes in the interior of the Earth race away from the core of our world, and more than one million of these particles cross through every square centimeter of the Earth’s crust each second.

The geoneutrinos being studied by the Borexino Experiment are the only experimental evidence, so far, of this radioactive decay near the core of our planet driving geological activity.

Roughly half of the heat driving geological processes is the result of radioactive decay, while the other half is leftover from the formation of the Earth, although the exact contributions from each source remain uncertain.

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