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"Impossible" Physics Breakthrough Achieved By Researchers Studying Mysterious “Ghost Particles” - The Debrief

"Impossible" Physics Breakthrough Achieved By Researchers Studying Mysterious “Ghost Particles” - The Debrief

Feb 07, 2023 1 min, 18 secs

With no electrical charge and almost no detectable mass, neutrinos have garnered the nickname “ghost particles” because of their minimal interactions with atoms.

Due to their unique properties, neutrinos are also renowned for being difficult to detect, despite being among the most abundant particles known to exist in the universe.

“We weren’t sure at first if it would work,” Cai said in a statement, “but we ultimately discovered we could use neutrinos to measure the size and shape of the protons that make up the nuclei of atoms.”

Kevin McFarland, the Dr. Steven Chu Professor in Physics at Rochester University, called the new method a “very indirect way of measuring something.” However, he says that the team’s approach “allows us to relate the structure of an object—in this case, a proton—to how many deflections we see in different angles.”

The Rochester team is quick to point out that although their new technique involving the use of neutrinos offers no clearer imagery of proton structure than past efforts relying on electron beams, the benefit to their new methodology is that it allows physicists a unique opportunity to gauge interactions that occur between the “ghost particles” and protons.

“Because our measurement is unambiguously a measurement of this other description of the proton’s shape that the ‘axial vector form factor’ provides, it can now be used to predict other processes,” McFarland told The Debrief, which includes the results of neutrinos scattering from neutrons, or possibly even neutrinos or antineutrinos scattering against the bound protons and neutrons within an atom’s nucleus.

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