One of the most exciting new frontiers in physics research is exploring neutrino interactions. Neutrinos are strange, exotic particles that travel at nearly the speed of light and pass through almost everything. Studying neutrinos could help scientists solve many of the mysteries of the universe, including why there's something rather than nothing.
The only problem is that because neutrinos pass through almost everything, they're extremely difficult to spot. Physicists have had to build gigantic detectors the size of entire buildings in order to catch a glimpse of some neutrinos, which makes it tough to study them.
That's why this new announcement from the COHERENT collaboration is so exciting: A group of scientists have managed to successfully detect neutrinos using an instrument no bigger than a thermos.
In order to build their tiny detector, the COHERENT team makes use of a new interaction between neutrinos and atomic nuclei. The interaction, called "coherent scattering," was hypothesized over 40 years ago but never observed until now.
Part of the problem is that coherent scattering is even harder to detect than normal neutrino interactions. Normal neutrino detectors spot high-energy neutrinos, and that high energy means any time they collide with an atom it's pretty easy to notice. Coherent scattering involves low-energy neutrinos, and even though low-energy neutrinos around, any collisions are barely noticeable.
In order to get around this, the COHERENT team built their detector with cesium iodide crystals, which give off light when they're hit by neutrinos. Spotting light is easy, which means the device will notice even the tiniest of impacts.
This smaller neutrino detector could translate into a portable detector in the future. Such a portable detector could be used like a Geiger counter to monitor neutrino radiation in nuclear facilities. Perhaps such a detector could even help scientists find and solve more mysteries of the universe.
Source: Nature
