Scientists are testing whether one of Einstein’s most fundamental principles holds true throughout the Universe.

A neutrino telescope deep in the Mediterranean Sea has put one of Einstein’s fundamental principles to a new test. After analyzing 5,828 atmospheric neutrino candidate events, scientists found no evidence that Lorentz invariance, a cornerstone of relativity, had been violated. Their findings place new restrictions on theories suggesting that the laws of physics might behave differently under certain conditions.

The international KM3NeT collaboration conducted the study using KM3NeT/ORCA, an underwater detector designed to investigate neutrinos and their unusual behavior. Published in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics (JCAP), the research establishes the first direct experimental limits on certain possible violations involving muon and tau neutrinos, two types of these elusive particles.