At the time, Pauli did not believe what he had proposed was true he said, “I have done a terrible thing, I have postulated a particle that cannot be detected” 3. In 1930, Pauli speculated that when neutrons form from the fusion of protons, the extra energy is carried away by light-weight, electrically neutral particles. Beta radioactive decay occurs when protons change into neutrons, such as when protons fuse near the center of the sun. In 1930, Wolfgang Pauli (the father of the Pauli Exclusion Principle) proposed the existence of the neutrino to explain the conservation of energy in beta radioactive decay. If neutrinos are so small and pass through almost everything known to us, as well as through potential dimensions unknown to us, how do we know that neutrinos exist? Where do neutrinos come from? These questions are best answered through a consideration of the history of the neutrino’s discovery. Physicists also suspect that neutrinos can move through dimensions forbidden to light 2. According to physicist Frank Close, “One neutrino can fly through a light year of lead without hitting anything” 1. In fact, about 400 billion neutrinos from the sun alone pass through each person on Earth each second. Neutrinos can pass through almost anything, and they do so constantly. Because neutrinos are so common, their mass, which remains unknown, is thought to have an effect on the gravity of the universe 1.
Neutrinos are likely the most abundant particles in the universe and may be more common than photons, the basic unit of light. To put the remarkably small size of a neutrino into perspective, consider that neutrinos are thought to be a million times smaller than electrons, which have a mass of 9.11 × 10 -31 kilograms 2. The concept of the neutrino is significant to our understanding of the universe because the neutrino can be used to determine how fast the universe is expanding, as well as its ultimate destiny 1.Įveryone has heard of electrons, protons, and neutrons, but what exactly is a neutrino? A neutrino is an exponentially small particle with no electrical charge. However, that statement might no longer be true because of the neutrino-the particle that may be able to transcend dimensions that light cannot. Throughout school and in any physics class, students are told that nothing travels faster than the speed of light.