- The Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO) in China’s Guangdong province will soon begin collecting data to study neutrinos, elusive subatomic particles produced by nuclear reactions.
- It aims to determine the mass hierarchy of neutrinos, which could offer insights into subatomic processes and the early universe.
- JUNO will study neutrinos from nearby nuclear power plants, the Sun, and the Earth’s radioactive decay to explore mantle convection and solar processes.
- The goal is to determine the lightest and heaviest neutrino types, which could help explain the fundamental properties of matter.
- Scientists from multiple countries, including France, Germany, Italy, the U.S., and others, are collaborating on JUNO.
- The observatory’s spherical detector will log data, which will be shared with institutions across the world for cross-checked analyses.
- JUNO is set to start operations in late 2025, ahead of other global neutrino observatories like DUNE in the U.S.
- While real-life applications of neutrinos are still distant, scientists speculate about future possibilities such as using neutrinos for long-distance communication.
| Neutrinos: Neutrinos are weakly interacting, little-understood particles are not massless, as was thought so far. Not only do they have non-zero masses, but different species (or flavours) of neutrinos seem to mix and oscillate into one another as they traverse through the cosmos. It is an example of physics beyond the so-called ‘Standard Model of Particle Physics’but would also have a great impact on diverse fields such as nuclear and particle physics, astrophysics and cosmology. |
Dig Deeper: Read about the India-based Neutrino Observatory.
