Billions upon billions of neutrinos speed harmlessly through everyones body every moment of the day, according to cosmologists. The bulk of these subatomic particles are believed to come straight from the Big Bang, rather than from the sun or other sources. Experimental confirmation of this belief could yield seminal insights into the early universe and the physics of neutrinos. But how do you interrogate something so elusive that it could zip through a barrier of iron a light-year thick as if it were empty space? At the U.S. Department of Energys Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL), researchers led by Princeton University physicist Chris Tully are set to hunt for these nearly massless Big Bang relics by exploiting a curious fact: Neutrinos can be captured by tritium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen, and provide a tiny boost of energy to the electrons -- or beta particles -- that are emitted in tritium decay. Tully has created a prototype lab at PPPL to detect Big Bang neutrinos by measuring the extra energy they impart to the electrons -- and to achieve this with greater precision than has ever been done before. Spotting these neutrinos is akin to detecting a faint heartbeat in a sports arena filled to the brim said Charles Gentile, who heads engineering for the project, which Tully has dubbed PTOLEMY for Princeton Tritium Observatory for Light, Early Universe Massive Neutrino Yield. Ptolemy was an ancient Greek astronomer who lived in Egypt during the first century.
Posted on: Sun, 28 Dec 2014 14:39:03 +0000
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