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Ghost Particle, The
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Program Overview
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NOVA explores the 70-year struggle so far to understand the most elusive of all the
elementary particles, the neutrino.
The program:
relates
how the neutrino first came to be theorized by physicist Wolfgang Pauli in
1930. notes the challenge of studying a particle with no electric charge. describes the first experiment that confirmed the existence of the
neutrino in 1956. recounts how scientists came to believe that neutrinos—which are
produced during radioactive decay—would also be involved in nuclear
fusion, a process suspected as the fuel source for the sun. tells how theoretician John Bahcall and chemist Ray Davis began studying
neutrinos to better understand how stars shine—Bahcall created the first
mathematical model predicting the sun's solar neutrino production and Davis
designed an experiment to measure solar neutrinos. details how Davis discovered only one-third of the neutrinos predicted
and how those results prompted scientists to wonder over the years whether
something was wrong with Davis' experiment, whether Bahcall's calculations were
incorrect, or whether the sun was operating differently than first believed. notes how scientists later began to rethink their ideas about what a
neutrino is and to wonder whether the different types of
neutrino—electron, muon, and tau—could be the key to the
problem. explains that while neutrinos can change from one type to another, the
Standard Model predicted a massless neutrino that traveled at the speed of
light and, therefore, could not experience time and would be unable to
change. reports on a Japanese detector experiment that indicated that neutrinos
do experience time, and therefore have mass and can change. describes how the first detector designed to detect all three types of
neutrinos confirmed Bahcall's predicted number of neutrinos and verified that
neutrinos do change as they travel from the sun to Earth. relates how future experiments are investigating the neutrino's
properties and exploring whether the neutrino may have played a role in the
creation of matter.
Taping Rights: Can be used up to one year after the program is taped off the air.
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