China to build the world’s largest ‘ghost particle’ detector

Subject : Science and Tech

SECTION: Space technology

Context:

China is building an enormous telescope in the western Pacific Ocean.

Details:

China’s new telescope, “Trident”, will span 7.5 cubic kilometers in the South China Sea. It will be 10,000 times more sensitive. It will be the largest of its kind.
It will detect “ghost particles”, also known as neutrinos.
At present, the largest neutrino-detecting telescope is the University of Madison-Wisconson’s “IceCube” telescope.
- Situated in the Antarctic, the telescope’s sensors span around 1 cubic kilometer.

What is a ghost particle?

Atoms consist of: Protons (positive charge), electrons (negative charge) and neutrons (no charge).
Neutrinos are a type of electron but they do not have any charge.
They are among the tiniest and most abundant particles in our universe.
Earlier they were considered to be massless, but recent evidence suggests that they do have a very small mass.
They rarely interact thus are very hard to detect and can be detected only when they interact with other particles.

How do scientists detect ghost particles?

Sometimes they interact with water molecules, which is why China is building its ghost molecule telescope underwater.
These ghost particles have been observed in fleeting instances when the particles create byproducts after traveling through water or ice.
- These “muons” create flashes of light that can be detected by sophisticated underwater telescopes.

Why does the detection of ghost particles matter?

They defy established rules of physics.
It’s not clear where the particles come from.
They might have played a role in the early universe, right after the big bang.
It may solve the origin of the mysterious cosmic rays, which are known to contain neutrinos.

Source: IE