neutrino

4 Articles

New Research Suggests That A Neutrino Laser Is Impossible

September 21, 2026 by 24 Comments

As cool as it would have been to wield lasers that produce a beam of neutrinos, recently two papers were published by MIT researchers that seem to dampen the likelihood of such lasers being at all possible. In a review paper by [Ana Maria Rey] et al. these two papers are investigated in more detail.

Although the concept behind a neutrino laser is rather simple, using the same superradiance effect involving a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) that allows for stimulation by photons to result in a synchronized direction of emitted photons, the idea of using a BEC of radioisotopes that naturally emit neutrinos in this fashion has now been effectively shot down.

The problem lies in taking the leap from photons with a BEC and applying this to a BEC of radioisotopes. Whereas photons are relatively low-energy at a mere 1 eV, a neutrino with 1+ MeV has a much greater kinetic effect on the particle that emitted it. Unlike a photon emitted by an atom, this leaves precious little time for the other particles in the BEC to be affected.

This first scenario is covered in the (paywalled) paper by [Yu-Kun Lu] et al. with their calculations showing that superradiance cannot occur with neutrinos in a BEC and thus a laser is impossible. In the (also paywalled) second paper by [Hanzhen Lin] et al. the question is asked whether the assumption that a BEC of a radioisotope will at all enhance radioactive decay, to which the answer is a curt ‘no’.

Although it’s impossible to prove a negative with the scientific method, these two studies have slammed close a couple of doors on the concept of a neutrino laser.

One of the photo-detector spheres of ARCA (Credit: KM3NeT)

Most Energetic Cosmic Neutrino Ever Observed By KM3NeT Deep Sea Telescope

February 14, 2025 by 7 Comments

On February 13th of 2023, ARCA of the kilometre cubic neutrino telescope (KM3NeT) detected a neutrino with an estimated energy of about 220 PeV. This event, called KM3-230213A, is the most energetic neutrino ever observed. Although extremely abundant in the universe, neutrinos only weakly interact with matter and thus capturing such an event requires very large detectors. Details on this event were published in Nature.

Much like other types of telescopes, KM3NeT uses neutrinos to infer information about remote objects and events in the Universe, ranging from our Sun to other solar systems and galaxies. Due to the weak interaction of neutrinos they cannot be observed like photons, but only indirectly via e.g. photomultipliers that detect the blue-ish light of Cherenkov radiation when the neutrino interacts with a dense medium, such as the deep sea water in the case of ARCA (Astroparticle Research with Cosmics in the Abyss). This particular detector is located at a depth of 3,450 meters off the coast of Sicily with 700 meter tall detection units (DUs) placed 100 meters apart which consist out of many individual spheres filled with detectors and supporting equipment.

With just one of these high-power neutrinos detected it’s hard to say exactly where or what it originated from, but with each additional capture we’ll get a clearer picture. For a fairly new neutrino telescope project it’s also a promising start especially since the project as a whole is still under construction, with additional detectors being installed off the coasts of France and Greece.

Engineering Lessons From The Super-Kamiokande Neutrino Observatory Failure

January 9, 2025 by 48 Comments

Every engineer is going to have a bad day, but only an unlucky few will have a day so bad that it registers on a seismometer.

We’ve always had a morbid fascination with engineering mega-failures, few of which escape our attention. But we’d never heard of the Super-Kamiokande neutrino detector implosion until stumbling upon [Alexander the OK]’s video of the 2001 event. The first half of the video below describes neutrinos in some detail and the engineering problems related to detecting and studying a particle so elusive that it can pass through the entire planet without hitting anything. The Super-Kamiokande detector was built to solve that problem, courtesy of an enormous tank of ultrapure water buried 1,000 meters inside a mountain in Japan and lined with over 10,000 supersized photomultiplier tubes to detect the faint pulses of Chernkov radiation emitted on the rare occasion that a neutrino interacts with a water molecule.

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Detecting Neutrinos, The Slippery Ghost Particles That Don’t Want To Interact

November 14, 2023 by 62 Comments

Neutrinos are some of the most elusive particles that are well-known to science. These tiny subatomic particles have no electric charge and an extremely small mass, making them incredibly difficult to detect. They are produced in abundance by the sun, as well as by nuclear reactions on Earth and in supernovae. Despite their elusive nature, scientists are keen to detect neutrinos as they can provide valuable information about the processes that produce them.

Neutrinos interact with matter so rarely that it takes a very special kind of detector to catch them in the act. These detectors come in a few different flavors, each employing its unique method to spot these elusive particles. In this article, we’ll take a closer look at how these detectors work and some of the most notable examples of neutrino detectors in the world today.

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