Decaying isotopes of hydrogen have just given us the smallest measurement yet of the mass of a neutrino.
– but these are indirect, catching the effects of the passing neutrinos, rather than the neutrinos themselves.of these particles is a particularly tough challenge. But, if we can obtain a measurement of this property, there will be so much more we can learn about the Universe. Unfortunately, it's also very hard to do. You can't just grab a tiny scale, plop a neutrino on it, and call it a day.to probe the mass of a neutrino.
Because neutrinos are so ghostly, it's not possible to measure them. But physicists are pretty sure that a particle and its antiparticle have evenly distributed mass and energy; therefore, if you measure the energy of the electrons, you can derive the energy of the neutrino.. To refine that result, the team paired an increase in the number of tritium decays with methods to reduce contamination from other types of radioactive decay, resulting in their refined upper limit.
"We are particularly proud of our analysis team that accepted this huge challenge with great commitment and was successful." The result marks the first time measurements of a neutrino have fallen below the 1 electronvolt threshold. It's an important result that, while still not quite an exact mass, will allow scientists to refine physical models of the Universe.
Meanwhile, the collaboration is going to continue making attempts to refine measurements of the mass of the neutrino.."To exhaust the full potential of this unique experiment, we will steadily increase the statistics of signal events and continuously develop and install upgrades to further reduce the background rate."
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