Pop goes the neutrino

摘要

This summer, a team of physicists from California will enlist the help of the US Navy to search the sea off the Bahamas for energetic visitors from space-unless the whales and snapping shrimp spoil the show. The team is trying to solve the mystery of extremely energetic cosmic rays that hit our atmosphere, sparking showers of other particles. Physicists have no idea what the rays are, where they come from, or how they travel so fast. One possibility is that they are neutrinos, in which case some would make it into the ocean. If they then interact with atoms in the water, the researchers reckon they'll be able to hear them.