{"id":211208,"date":"2025-04-11T22:07:42","date_gmt":"2025-04-12T03:07:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/04\/elusive-neutrinos-mass-just-got-halved-and-it-could-mean-physicists-are-close-to-solving-a-major-cosmic-mystery"},"modified":"2025-04-11T22:07:42","modified_gmt":"2025-04-12T03:07:42","slug":"elusive-neutrinos-mass-just-got-halved-and-it-could-mean-physicists-are-close-to-solving-a-major-cosmic-mystery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/04\/elusive-neutrinos-mass-just-got-halved-and-it-could-mean-physicists-are-close-to-solving-a-major-cosmic-mystery","title":{"rendered":"Elusive neutrinos\u2019 mass just got halved \u2014 and it could mean physicists are close to solving a major cosmic mystery"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/elusive-neutrinos-mass-just-got-halved-and-it-could-mean-physicists-are-close-to-solving-a-major-cosmic-mystery.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Physicists have scaled down the maximum possible mass of an elusive \u201cghost particle\u201d called a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.livescience.com\/64827-neutrinos.html\" rel=\"nofollow\"> neutrino<\/a> to at least one-millionth the weight of an electron. The revision takes scientists one more step toward a discovery that could alter or even upend the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.livescience.com\/the-standard-model\" rel=\"nofollow\"> Standard Model of particle physics<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Our universe is awash with phantom specks of matter. Every second, around 100 billion neutrinos pass through each square centimeter of your body. They\u2019re produced in multiple places: the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.livescience.com\/23394-fusion.html\" rel=\"nofollow\"> nuclear fire<\/a> of stars, in enormous stellar explosions, by radioactive decay and in particle accelerators and nuclear reactors on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.livescience.com\/earth.html\" rel=\"nofollow\"> Earth<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Even though they\u2019re the most common form of matter in the cosmos, neutrinos\u2019 minimal interactions with other matter types makes them notoriously difficult to detect, and they\u2019re the only particles in the Standard Model whose precise mass remains unaccounted for.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Physicists have scaled down the maximum possible mass of an elusive \u201cghost particle\u201d called a neutrino to at least one-millionth the weight of an electron. The revision takes scientists one more step toward a discovery that could alter or even upend the Standard Model of particle physics. Our universe is awash with phantom specks of [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":692,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[873,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-211208","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nuclear-energy","category-particle-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211208","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/692"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=211208"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211208\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=211208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=211208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=211208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}