TRIUMF, a laboratory that studies nuclear and particle physics in partnership with York University and the University of Toronto, have announced a "new breakthrough in understanding neutrinos - nature's most elusive particles," says an article that appeared on Space Daily.
Neutrinos have perplexed scientists for their ability to change from one form to another as they travel, but TRIUMF researched Michael Wilking said there is "definitive proof" of "a new type of neutrino oscillation in which muon neutrinos transform into electron neutrinos," Space Daily writes.
The discovery is the result of an experiment known as the international Tokai to Kamioka (T2K) collaboration, which investigates how neutrinos change form as they travel.
This particular transformation, of muon to electron, had not been conclusively observed before. The fact that it now has is considered a major milestone. The transformation was observed when a "beam of muon neutrinos" was produced "in the J-PARC accelerator facility in Tokai, Japan. The neutrino beam is monitored by a nearby detector complex ND280 (much of which was built in Canada) and aimed at the gigantic Super-Kamiokande (SK) underground detector in Kamioka, 295 km away."
An analysis of data revealed that there were more electron neutrinos than what would be expected had the protons not transformed. "This T2K observation is the first of its kind to explicitly see a unique flavor of neutrinos appear at the detection point from a beam initially consisting of a different type of neutrino," Space Daily writes.
The article credits York University for its "significant contributions to this historic result." York monitored the rate of neutrino production at the J-PARC facility, as well as the rate these neutrinos interacted in the nearby T2K detector complex.
York University professor Sampa Bhadra, York PhD graduate Vyacheslav Galymov, graduate student Elder Pinzon, research associate Mark Hartz (University of Toronto), mechanical engineer Mircea Cadabeschi (who built mostly at U of T), graduate student Patrick de Perio, are credited as key figures in the discovery.
"This form of transformation is sensitive to matter-antimatter asymmetry in the universe," says Bhadra in the article. "What can be more exciting that studying a particle that may hold the clue to our very existence?"
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Original source: Space Daily