Detection of the neutrino
Detección del neutrino
- Date
- 1956 · confidence high
- Place
- Savannah River reactor, South Carolina, United States
- Credited to
- Clyde Cowan; Frederick Reines; Wolfgang Pauli (prediction)
- People
- 👤 Clyde Cowan1919–1974👤 Frederick Reines1918–1998👤 Wolfgang Ernst Pauli1900–1958
- Field
- Cosmos & Earth
What was discovered
Postulated by Pauli in 1930 to save the conservation of energy in beta decay, the neutrino is detected 26 years later next to a nuclear reactor by capturing antineutrinos in water with cadmium. A nearly massless particle exists that passes through matter with barely any interaction.
Reines received the Nobel Prize in 1995; Cowan had died in 1974.
What it led to
- Neutrino physics and neutrino astronomy
- Solar neutrinos and neutrino oscillation
- Detection of supernova neutrinos (1987)
- Three generations of leptons
Built on
- Pauli's hypothesis (1930)
- Fermi's theory of beta decay (1934)
- Nuclear reactors as intense sources
Made possible
- Atmospheric neutrinos at Kolar Gold Fields1965
- Neutrino detectors (Super-Kamiokande, IceCube)
- Reactor monitoring by neutrinos