How our team spotted the most energetic neutrino detected to date
Recent research on lightweight particles called neutrinos might have passed you by – much like the more than 10 trillion neutrinos passing through your body each second. Now, our new paper – with 21 countries, more than 60 institutes and around 360 scientists contributing – reports the observation of the most energetic neutrino yet. Despite the enormous number of neutrinos around us, this is one of the most exciting – and rarest – astronomical events of the year. Our paper has been published in the journal Nature. Neutrinos are tiny elementary (sub-atomic) particles that are abundant in our universe. Yet, you probably haven’t seen any. They do not interact with other matter in the ways we are familiar with. Their lack of charge, for example, means that the electrostatic force that governs most of our everyday experiences does not interact with them at all. And their vanishingly small mass means that gravity – the other major force we experience – also has no effect on them in lab conditions on Earth. So, detecting their presence …