{"id":732874,"date":"2026-06-13T00:02:08","date_gmt":"2026-06-13T00:02:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/732874\/"},"modified":"2026-06-13T00:02:08","modified_gmt":"2026-06-13T00:02:08","slug":"underground-detector-to-understand-ghost-particles-in-universe-releases-first-major-findings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/732874\/","title":{"rendered":"Underground detector to understand ghost particles in universe releases first major findings"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>NEW YORK \u2014 A massive underground detector aimed at understanding the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2018\/07\/13\/scientists-discover-incredible-new-way-to-understand-universe\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">mysterious ghost particles\u00a0in our universe<\/a> released its first major results on Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p>The\u00a0Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory\u00a0in China started collecting data in August with the goal of\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=6wBNOniqCPY&amp;t=1s\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">understanding neutrinos<\/a>: tiny cosmic particles that date back to the Big Bang and\u00a0whiz harmlessly through our bodies\u00a0by the trillions every second. <\/p>\n<p>Yet they weigh almost nothing, making them difficult to sniff out.<\/p>\n<p>A cosmic detector housed underground at the Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory in Kaiping in southern China\u2019s Guangdong province, Oct. 11, 2024. AP Photo\/Ng Han Guan<\/p>\n<p>In a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature, the JUNO team unveiled its initial findings from two months of data collection \u2014 including some of the most precise measurements to date of how neutrinos switch between three varieties, or flavors, as they <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2020\/05\/21\/scientists-cast-doubt-on-nasa-parallel-universe-theory\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">zip through space<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt really makes me look forward to more exciting results in the future,\u201d said physicist Kate Scholberg with Duke University, who had no role in the new research.<\/p>\n<p>The spherical JUNO detector is located 2,297 feet (700 meters) underground. It examines antineutrinos that come from collisions inside two nearby nuclear power plants. <\/p>\n<p>A view of the soon-to-be-completed and sealed central detector at the JUNO, during an organized media tour by the Chinese foreign ministry and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). REUTERS<\/p>\n<p>Workers labor beneath the cosmic detector housed underground.  AP Photo\/Ng Han Guan<\/p>\n<p>Antineutrinos are equally mysterious, opposite versions of neutrinos that scientists can study to understand their behavior and how neutrinos work.<\/p>\n<p>When the antineutrinos meet particles within the detector, they produce a flash of light.<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\tStart your day with all you need to know\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p class=\"inline-module__cta\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMorning Report delivers the latest news, videos, photos and more.\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\t\tThanks for signing up!\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p>Scientists are hoping the detector will help resolve the longstanding mystery of how heavy each neutrino flavor is. They think two are similar in weight and that the third is an oddball, but they aren\u2019t sure whether two are heavy and the other is light or vice versa.<\/p>\n<p>The initial results haven\u2019t answered that question just yet, but they show what the detector is capable of \u2014 and that it \u201cwill be able to test the finer ripples\u201d that separate the neutrino flavors and their masses, said study co-author Liangjian Wen, a member of the JUNO collaboration.<\/p>\n<p>Two similar neutrino detectors \u2014 Japan\u2019s Hyper-Kamiokande and the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment based in the United States \u2014 are set to begin data collection within the next decade, cross-checking the China detector\u2019s results using different approaches.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK \u2014 A massive underground detector aimed at understanding the\u00a0mysterious ghost particles\u00a0in our universe released its first&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":732875,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[64,63,512,19142,128,20628,285,1346],"class_list":["post-732874","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-china","tag-nuclear-power","tag-science","tag-scientists","tag-space","tag-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/732874","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=732874"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/732874\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/732875"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=732874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=732874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=732874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}