Recent Comments

    Neutrinos tagged posts

    Ghost particles may secretly decide the fate of collapsing stars

    July 30, 2025, Categories  Astronomy/Space, Physics

    illustration of blue
    Left Panel: When neutrinos scatter with themselves via standard model interactions the collapsing core of the massive star is relatively cold, and the neutrinos are mostly all electron flavor. In this scenario we may get a supernova explosion leaving, usually, a neutron star remnant
    Right Panel: If neutrinos have “secret” interactions with themselves, then electron neutrinos can be converted to all flavors. This leads to rapid heating, the “melting” of nuclei, and the rapid conversion of most protons to neutrons. We might get a black hole instead of a neutron star remnant. It is not yet clear if we get a supernova explosion.
    (cr: George Fuller lab / UC San Diego)

    Neutrinos are cosmic tricksters, paradoxically hardly there but lethal to stars significantly more massive than the sun...

    Read More

    Using Supernovae to study Neutrinos’ Strange Properties

    August 19, 2023, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    When supernovae explode, neutrinos from their core carry enormous amounts of energy in all directions.
    Photo: Getty Images

    New study offers hope to long-standing scientific problem. In a new study, researchers have taken an important step toward understanding how exploding stars can help reveal how neutrinos, mysterious subatomic particles, secretly interact with themselves.

    One of the less well-understood elementary particles, neutrinos rarely interact with normal matter, and instead travel invisibly through it at almost the speed of light. These ghostly particles outnumber all the atoms in the universe and are always passing harmlessly through our bodies, but due to their low mass and lack of an electric charge they can be incredibly difficult to find and study.

    But in a study p...

    Read More

    Key clues to Understanding the Death of Stars

    December 25, 2020, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Three flavors are better than one — in ice cream and supernova research - Northwestern Now

    New research has found that by studying all three ‘flavors’ involved in a supernova, they’ve unlocked more clues as to how and why stars die. Any Neapolitan ice cream lover knows three flavors are better than one. New research from Northwestern University has found that by studying all three “flavors” involved in a supernova, they’ve unlocked more clues as to how and why stars die.

    Scientists look at neutrinos (subatomic particles) for critical information about supernova explosions. While previous research identified three “flavors” of neutrinos, many researchers continued to simplify studies on the topic by studying “vanilla” while ignoring “chocolate” and “strawberry.”

    By including all three flavors in the study, Northwestern researchers have developed a deeper knowledge of d...

    Read More

    Neutrinos yield first Experimental Evidence of Catalyzed Fusion Dominant in many Stars

    November 29, 2020, Categories  Astronomy/Space, Physics

    Borexino detector. courtesy Borexino Collaboration.
    Borexino detector. courtesy Borexino Collaboration.

    The CNO energy-production mechanism in the universe is detected. An international team of about 100 scientists of the Borexino Collaboration, including particle physicist Andrea Pocar at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, report in Nature this week detection of neutrinos from the sun, directly revealing for the first time that the carbon-nitrogen-oxygen (CNO) fusion-cycle is at work in our sun.

    The CNO cycle is the dominant energy source powering stars heavier than the sun, but it had so far never been directly detected in any star, Pocar explains.

    For much of their life, stars get energy by fusing hydrogen into helium, he adds. In stars like our sun or lighter, this mostly happens through the ‘proton-proton’ chains...

    Read More