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Aug 3, 2016

Elusive neutrinos and hypothetical ‘dark sector’ particles could hold answers to cosmic mysteries

Posted by in categories: cosmology, particle physics

All material things appear to be made of elementary particles that are held together by fundamental forces. But what are their exact properties? How do they affect how our universe looks and changes? And are there particles and forces that we don’t know of yet?

Questions with cosmic implications like these drive many of the scientific efforts at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. Three distinguished particle physicists have joined the lab over the past months to pursue research on two particularly mysterious forms of matter: neutrinos and .

Neutrinos, which are abundantly produced in nuclear reactions, are among the most common types of particles in the universe. Although they were discovered 60 years ago, their basic properties puzzle scientists to this date.

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