Japanese Neutrino Finding Could Explain Why There Is Matter in the Universe
Super-Kamiokande Built in an abandoned mine, the "Super-K" neutrino detector surrounds 50,000 gallons of super pure water with 11,200 photomultiplier tubes. To give an idea of the scale, that object in the distance is two men in a rubber raft. courtesy of the Science and Technology Facilities Council of the UKA new kind of oscillation could be the key to life, the universe, and everything Japan's "T2K," one of our favorite neutrino experiments (we're keen on several), might have just cracked the mystery of why matter triumphed over antimatter after the Big Bang (they should have canceled each other out). The international experiment's data from earlier this year--before its science was interrupted by the earthquake in March--indicates that muon neutrinos can transform into electron neutrinos. A primer on neutrinos and why we should care about them: Neutrinos are one of the fundamental building blocks of matter, though they interact very...