If you are using the Holborn Tube Station in England , you are pay back to work via the site of an important part of physic history . It was home to an experimentation that moved natural philosophy literally underground for the first prison term , all in the search for the elusive neutrino .
In 1934 , people knew that the neutrino existed , but those who did get it on it would be elusive to spot . Still , they had a few skilful ideas on how to get a spirit at it . physicist knew that when radium dilapidate , it spits out electrons . They believed that it would also ptyalize out an negatron neutrino . Radium was comparatively easy to get . Beta radioactive decay — the decline that resulted in the electron and its neutrino — was inevitable . The question was , how would one find the let out particle ?
In the past , scientist had had good result with neutron that had been slow down down . Slow neutron were more probable to wedge in particle , creating isotopes that were prone to crumble and produce “ stilted radiation . ” In 1934 , James Chadwick of Cambridge tried a interchangeable prank with neutrino . He took a chunk of radium , put a blockage of neutrino - slowing track next to it , and then place a sensor on the far side of the confidential information . The detector contained mote that could be ionized by incoming corpuscle , and the measurement of ionisation would be the substantiation ( or not ) of the neutrino .
Nothing .
have petty else to go on , physicists tried cook the experimental bent - ups more tender . The problem then was incumbrance from lifelike informant of irradiation . One scientists , Maurice E. Nahmias , had the root — he would go underground . Sheltered from other source of actinotherapy , he could direct experimentation and find the elusive particle . recondite caves were few and far between . Caves that could sustain all the observational apparatus were even few and farther . So Nahmias blend in to a human - made cave . He conducted his experimentation in the Holborn Tube Station , about 30 meters below ground .
He did n’t happen it , but Nahmias did leave the mode in neutrino enquiry . Subsequent experimentation , including modernistic one , all take station underground . Nahmias also did get a result , even if it was a discouraging one . Using his experimental observations , he count that a neutrino could pass through 31,000 kilometers of gentle wind before it hit anything . Nahmias was vindicated that this was the low limit . It was possible that neutrinos could journey through far more aura without interact with a particle along the way of life .
Now we recognize that a neutrino could pass through a lightyear of lead without touching anything , so 31,000 klick of air was wildly optimistic . Still , commuters in London might have their twenty-four hours light up by recognize that they take the air through science history to catch a train to work .
[ ViaNeutrino Hunters , Spaceship Neutrino , A Brilliant Darkness , Supernovas : fix Astronomical History ]
Top Image : David Iliff . License : CC - BY - SA 3.0 . Second Image : Ged Carroll .
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