{"id":216021,"date":"2025-06-16T14:03:59","date_gmt":"2025-06-16T19:03:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/06\/physicists-record-the-most-precise-neutrino-mass-measurement-ever"},"modified":"2025-06-16T14:03:59","modified_gmt":"2025-06-16T19:03:59","slug":"physicists-record-the-most-precise-neutrino-mass-measurement-ever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/06\/physicists-record-the-most-precise-neutrino-mass-measurement-ever","title":{"rendered":"Physicists record the most precise neutrino mass measurement ever"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/physicists-record-the-most-precise-neutrino-mass-measurement-ever.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The Standard Model of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thebrighterside.news\/post\/worlds-smallest-particle-accelerator-could-revolutionize-medicine-and-physics\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">particle physics<\/a>, our best guide to the building blocks of nature, once claimed neutrinos were massless. But that turned out to be wrong. Neutrinos do have mass\u2014just an incredibly tiny one. So far, though, no experiment has measured that mass directly. That\u2019s where the KATRIN experiment comes in.<\/p>\n<p>KATRIN stands for the Karlsruhe Tritium Neutrino Experiment. It\u2019s based in Germany and stretches nearly 70 meters, or about 230 feet\u2014longer than a Boeing 747. Published in the journal, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.science.org\/doi\/10.1126\/science.adq9592\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Science<\/a>, the experiment uses a radioactive form of hydrogen called tritium, which naturally decays into helium. When this happens, it releases an electron and a neutrino.<\/p>\n<p>By measuring the energy of the electron, scientists can figure out how much energy the neutrino took away. This helps them estimate the neutrino\u2019s mass. The trick is, this has to be done with extreme accuracy. That\u2019s why KATRIN includes one of the world\u2019s most advanced spectrometers, which is 10 meters wide and filters out unwanted particles with precision.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Standard Model of particle physics, our best guide to the building blocks of nature, once claimed neutrinos were massless. But that turned out to be wrong. Neutrinos do have mass\u2014just an incredibly tiny one. So far, though, no experiment has measured that mass directly. That\u2019s where the KATRIN experiment comes in. KATRIN stands for [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":511,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1694,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-216021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-electronics","category-particle-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216021","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\/511"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=216021"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216021\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=216021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=216021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=216021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}