Tiny Cosmic Particle Delivers Major Breakthrough in Astronomy
For the first time, astronomers have traced a neutrino back to its birthplace, billions of light-years across the universe.
One of the fundamental particles that makes up the universe is also one of the most mysterious.
Neutrinos, Italian for “little neutral one,” are everywhere. They emerged soon after the Big Bang, and, later on, from black holes, exploding stars, the nuclear reaction that fuels our sun, even from the interaction between cosmic radiation and Earth’s atmosphere. The tiny particles have very, very little mass—how much exactly, no one knows—and don’t abide by the same rules as other particles with which we’re more familiar. Unlike electrons, for example, neutrinos lack an electric charge, so the usual
