Ghost particles in the universe: neutrinos in astrophysics and cosmology

• Autores: Georg Raffelt
• Localización: Mètode Science Studies Journal: Annual Review, ISSN 2174-3487, ISSN-e 2174-9221, Nº. 7, 2017 (Ejemplar dedicado a: Unravelling science), págs. 190-199
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Neutrinos are nearly massless and very difficult to detect because they interact so very weakly. Sixty years after seeing the first of these «ghost particles» we know a lot about their properties. Today, observing them in nuclear reactors, the Sun, the Earth’s crust and atmosphere, and at high energies from distant cosmic sources is almost a routine task – they have become unique astrophysical messengers. They are important for a number of aspects: neutrinos shape some of the most dramatic astrophysical phenomena in the form of stellar-collapse supernova explosions, they may have created the excess of matter over antimatter in the universe, and neutrino-like «weakly interacting massive particles» may well account for the dark matter of the universe.