© Borexino CollaborationThe Borexino neutrino detector is located at Italy's Gran Sasso National Laboratory, about 5,000 feet (1.5 km) under Gran Sasso Mountain. The instrument detects anti-neutrinos and other subatomic particles that interact in its special liquid center, a 300-ton sphere of scintillator fluid surrounded by a thin, 27.8-foot (8.5-meter) diameter transparent nylon balloon. This all “floats” inside another 700 tons of buffer fluid in a 45-foot (13.7-meter) diameter stainless steel tank immersed in ultra-purified water. The buffering fluid shields the scintillator from radiation from the outer layers of the detector and its surroundings.
Billions of ethereal particles known as neutrinos pour through us every second from the sun. Lately, scientists have realized that these mysterious entities do possess mass, albeit a small amount, despite previous predictions that they had none.
Now a giant scientific experiment housed deep beneath mountains in Italy is analyzing neutrinos from the sun with unprecedented detail, which might one day help solve the enigmas neutrinos pose, as well as shed light on the
inner workings of stars.Neutrinos are generated by nuclear reactions and certain types of radioactive decay. They are created in great multitudes in the nuclear furnace of the sun, flowing through Earth's surface in numbers as high as 420 billion per square inch (65 billion per square centimeter) per second. However, they have a neutral electrical charge and almost never interact with other particles, which means they stream through regular matter virtually unaffected, only rarely slamming into atoms.
The new findings come from the
Borexino experiment buried under the Apennine Mountains at the Gran Sasso National Laboratory in Italy, one of the most sensitive neutrino detectors on the planet.
Another experiment at Gran Sasso, called OPERA, also studies neutrinos, but looks for particles created in a lab in Switzerland, rather than those coming from the sun. OPERA's science team recently made headlines when it announced findings that suggest
neutrinos may be traveling faster than the speed of light, which was thought to be the ultimate cosmic speed limit.
