Fermilab Discovery Science Resources: Nine Questions

7. What are neutrinos telling us?

Ubiquitous, elusive and full of surprises, neutrinos are the most mysterious of the known particles in the universe. They interact so weakly with other particles that trillions of them pass through our bodies each second without leaving a trace. The sun shines brightly in neutrinos, produced in the internal fusion reactions that power the sun. These reactions produce neutrinos of only one kind, but they mysteriously morph into two other kinds on their way to earth. Neutrinos have mass, but the heaviest neutrino is at least a million times lighter than the lightest charged particle. review.

Experiments
  • Argon Neutrino Teststand - Working with a small-scale liquid argon detector
  • MINERvA - Studying neutrino-nucleus interactions
  • MiniBooNE - Verifying the results of an experiment presenting strong evidence for the oscillation of muon anti-neutrinos into electron anti-neutrinos
  • MINOS - Public Website - Observing the phenomena of neutrino oscillations
  • NovA - Investigating the properties of neutrinos, especially the transtion of muon neutrinos into election neutrinos
  • LBNE - A proposed experiment to explore neutrino interactions and transformations
Recent Scientific Results