Ghostbusters in the World of Particle Physics

by Max Harvey

As humans it is all too common for us to try to categorize things and file them so that they are nice and ordered. Think of our dictionaries arranged by alphabetical order or our cookbooks that are separated into sweet and savory. The usefulness of this process is that it makes things easier to reference and easier to understand. As a result this whole process is infinitely useful to scientists who often have incredibly large sets of data or information to work with. Probably the most famous categorisation system in the scientific community is the periodic table, which contains around about 120 elements that are responsible for making up nearly everything that you will ever see. However for physicists, another version of the periodic table, the standard model, is arguably of more importance. The standard model of particle physics contains just 17 particles and it is actually these particles that are responsible for making up all of the elements in the periodic table.

Whilst there is a lot to talk about in the image above, what in my opinion are the most fascinating particles out of the 17 are the three neutrinos in the bottom row.

Neutrinos are tiny chargeless fundamental particles that have incredibly small masses. Every second there are over 100 trillion of them passing straight through your body but they will hardly ever interact with the atoms in you so don’t worry! In fact in your lifetime, if you are one of the lucky ones, there might be one interaction between a neutrino passing through you and the atoms inside of you.

These particles as a result of this are incredibly hard to detect because it is almost as if the neutrinos are ghosts. So how do the particle ghostbusters go about doing this?

Enter SNOLAB.

SNOLAB is a state of the art dark matter and neutrino research facility situated in Ontario, Canada. The thing that makes this laboratory so fascinating however is the fact that it is buried 2 km into a mine shaft. This location along with some of the most rigorous cleaning procedures in existence prior to you entering the lab means that SNOLAB is able to record data on even the most rare and weak interactions such as the ones that could be observed between neutrinos and other matter.

Up until very recently it has been incredibly difficult to study neutrinos due to the high level of care that is required in order to obtain the necessary conditions to conduct any experiments. However with recent advancements in technology this area of research will hopefully lead to a much better understanding of what role neutrinos play in the standard model. In particular, it is hoped that research at SNOLAB will be able to solve the debate as to whether the neutrino is its own antiparticle which could be proved by a process known as neutrinoless double beta decay which unfortunately would be an incredibly rare occurrence even if it did occur. However the scientists at SNOLAB are working to ensure the greatest level of accuracy and precision in their experiments so that they have the greatest possible chance of success in their endeavours.

SNOLAB is a great example of how specialised and sophisticated apparatus and experiments must be now-a-days in order to push the limit of human understanding in the sciences and to make a breakthrough. Particle physics could be said to be one of the most expensive scientific fields of study with operations such as the LHC at CERN, SNOLAB and also a number of dark matter detectors all being used to further knowledge within the field. Despite this expense however, particle physics is one of the fields that shows the most promise of future discovery as scientists strive to create and analyse new and mysterious particles. In the future, hopefully the experiments at SNOLAB will uncover something new that will one day be taught in schools to students.