In the 1960s, scientists discovered the 'solar neutrino problem': fewer neutrinos were reaching Earth than their solar models predicted.
Credit: NASA
PARIS: Scientists in Italy are 98% certain that they observed 'neutrino oscillation', a phenomenon that proves the mysterious sub-atomic particles have mass and will modify the Standard Model of Physics.
The finding could have major implications for our understanding of matter in the universe, the researchers said.
For decades physicists had observed that fewer neutrinos - the most common particle in the universe, which is electrically neutral and travels close to the speed of light - arrived at Earth from the Sun than solar models predicted. This was dubbed the 'Solar Neutrino Problem'.
Now you see it, now you don't
That meant one of two things: either the models were wrong, or something was happening to the neutrinos along the way.
At least one variety called a muon-neutrino was actually seen to disappear, lending credence to a Nobel-winning 1969 hypothesis that the minuscule particles were shape-shifting into a new and unseen form.
Now scientists at Italy's National Institute for Nuclear Physics have for the first time observed - with 98% certainty - what they change into during a process called neutrino oscillation: another type of particle known as tau.
Neutrinos have mass
"This will be the long-awaited proof of this process. It was a missing piece of the puzzle," said Antonio Ereditato, a researcher at the Institute and spokesman for the OPERA group that carried out the study.
"If true, it means that new physics will be required to explain this fact," he said by phone.
Under the prevailing Standard Model, neutrinos cannot have mass. But the new experiments prove that they do.
The nature of dark matter
One implication is the existence of other, as yet unobserved types of neutrinos that could help clarify the nature of Dark Matter, which is believed to make up about 25% of the universe.
"Whatever exists in the infinitely small always has repercussions in the infinitely big," Ereditato said.
"A model which could explain why the neutrino is so small without vanishing will have profound implications for the understanding of our universe - how it was, how it evolved, and how it will eventually die."
