Researchers have shown that they can shield a sensitive, scalable 44-kilogram germanium detector array from background radioactivity, a key step towards solving a much bigger mystery.
If equal amounts of matter and antimatter had formed in the Big Bang more than 13 billion years ago, they would have annihilated one other upon meeting—and today’s universe would be full of energy but no matter to form stars, planets, and life.
“It’s almost comical to say it, but we are searching for the absence of neutrinos.”
Yet matter exists now. That fact suggests something is wrong with the Standard Model of Physics—which as written states that there is symmetry between subatomic particles and their so-called “antiparticles.”
