Light shed on strange particle
Rebecca Morelle
BBC News
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The particles first passed through a detector at the Fermilab Physicists have confirmed that neutrinos, which are thought to have played a key role during the creation of the Universe, have mass. This is the first major finding of the US-based Main Injector Neutrino Oscillation Search (Minos) experiment.
The findings suggest that the Standard Model, which describes how the building blocks of the Universe behave and interact, needs a revision. Neutrinos are believed to be vital to our understanding of the Universe. But scientists know frustratingly little about these fundamental particles. The findings build on work carried out by Japanese physicists.
Neutrinos are sometimes described as "ghost particles" because they can pass through space, the Earth's atmosphere and the Earth itself with almost no interaction with normal matter. This makes studying them very difficult.
Mar 31, 2006
Rebecca Morelle
BBC News
_______
The particles first passed through a detector at the Fermilab Physicists have confirmed that neutrinos, which are thought to have played a key role during the creation of the Universe, have mass. This is the first major finding of the US-based Main Injector Neutrino Oscillation Search (Minos) experiment.
The findings suggest that the Standard Model, which describes how the building blocks of the Universe behave and interact, needs a revision. Neutrinos are believed to be vital to our understanding of the Universe. But scientists know frustratingly little about these fundamental particles. The findings build on work carried out by Japanese physicists.
Neutrinos are sometimes described as "ghost particles" because they can pass through space, the Earth's atmosphere and the Earth itself with almost no interaction with normal matter. This makes studying them very difficult.
Mar 31, 2006
