{"id":495422,"date":"2026-06-12T04:18:10","date_gmt":"2026-06-12T04:18:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/495422\/"},"modified":"2026-06-12T04:18:10","modified_gmt":"2026-06-12T04:18:10","slug":"giant-underground-detector-releases-first-major-findings-on-ghost-particles-sciencealert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/495422\/","title":{"rendered":"Giant Underground Detector Releases First Major Findings on Ghost Particles : ScienceAlert"},"content":{"rendered":"

NEW YORK (AP) \u2013 A massive underground detector aimed at understanding the mysterious ghost particles<\/a> in our universe released its first major results on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

The Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory<\/a> in China started collecting data in August with the goal of understanding neutrinos<\/a>.<\/p>\n

These tiny cosmic particles date back to the Big Bang<\/a> and whiz harmlessly through our bodies<\/a> by the trillions every second.<\/p>\n

Yet they weigh almost nothing, making them difficult to sniff out.<\/p>\n

\"WorkersWorkers on the underside of the detector. (AP Photo\/Ng Han Guan)<\/p>\n

The JUNO team unveiled its initial findings<\/a> from two months of data collection \u2013 including some of the most precise measurements to date of how neutrinos<\/a> switch between three varieties, or flavors, as they zip through space.<\/p>\n

“It really makes me look forward to more exciting results in the future,” said physicist Kate Scholberg with Duke University, who had no role in the new research.<\/p>\n

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

\"TechnicalThe 20-ktonne liquid scintillator detector is located underground to detect electron antineutrinos from nuclear reactors via inverse \u03b2-decay interactions. (The JUNO Collaboration, Nature, 2026<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Antineutrinos are equally mysterious, opposite versions of neutrinos that scientists can study to understand their behavior and how neutrinos work.<\/p>\n

When the antineutrinos meet particles within the detector, they produce a flash of light.<\/p>\n

Scientists are hoping the detector will help resolve the longstanding mystery of how heavy each neutrino<\/a> flavor is.<\/p>\n

They think two are similar in weight and that the third is an oddball, but they aren’t sure whether two are heavy and the other is light or vice versa.<\/p>\n

\"Subscribe<\/a><\/p>\n

The initial results haven’t answered that question just yet.<\/p>\n

But they show what the detector is capable of \u2013 and that it “will be able to test the finer ripples” that separate the neutrino flavors and their masses, said study co-author Liangjian Wen, a member of the JUNO collaboration.<\/p>\n

Related: Most Energetic Ghost Particle Ever Seen May Have Come From Black Hole Jets<\/a><\/p>\n

Two similar neutrino detectors \u2013 Japan’s Hyper-Kamiokande and the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment based in the United States \u2013 are set to begin data collection within the next decade, cross-checking the China detector’s results using different approaches.<\/p>\n

The research has been published in Nature<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK (AP) \u2013 A massive underground detector aimed at understanding the mysterious ghost particles in our universe…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":495423,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[61,60,248,82],"class_list":["post-495422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-physics","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-physics","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/495422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=495422"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/495422\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/495423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=495422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=495422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=495422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}