Large Hadron Collider: Ghost Particles Detected in LHC for the First Time

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Ghost Particles Detected: Relevance

GS 3: Science and Technology- developments and their applications and effects in everyday life.

Recently, for the first time, researchers have detected neutrino candidates produced by the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the CERN facility.

In what could be referred as a major milestone in particle physics, researchers have reported observing six neutrino interactions during an experiment at the LHC.
Prior to this project, no sign of neutrinos has ever been seen at any particle collider, and not just at LHC.

This significant breakthrough is a step toward developing a deeper understanding of these elusive particles and the role they play in the universe.
Detecting collider neutrinos provides access to neutrino energies and types that are rarely seen elsewhere.

Neutrinos are subatomic particles that have a very small mass like an electron. Neutrinos, however, have no electrical charge. This characteristic of neutrinos makes them extremely difficult to detect.
Neutrinos are actually everywhere. They’re one of the most abundant subatomic particles in the Universe.
As they carry no charge and have almost zero mass, they stream through the Universe at almost the speed of light, and barely interact with it at all.

Billions of the things are streaming through us right now. To a neutrino, the rest of the Universe is basically incorporeal; that’s why they’re also known as ghost particles.

The LHC—which includes four main detectors: ALICE, ATLAS, CMS and LHCb—generally works by colliding two high-energy particle beams with one another close to the speed of light.
When the charged particles, like protons, smash into one another at such high speeds, the energy of the impact becomes matter in the form of new particles or subatomic particles.
So, the LHC can essentially “produce” subatomic particles.

This reported detection of neutrino interactions reveals two major things/

First, it verified that the position forward of the ATLAS interaction point at the LHC is the right location for detecting collider neutrinos.
Second, the efforts demonstrated the effectiveness of using an emulsion detector to observe these kinds of neutrino interactions.

FASERnu, a neutrino subdetector, is what is known as an emulsion detector.
Lead and tungsten plates are alternated with layers of emulsion: During particle experiments at the LHC, neutrinos can collide with nuclei in the lead and tungsten plates, producing particles that leave tracks in the emulsion layers.