Technically, We Shouldn’t Be—But ‘Cosmic Ghosts’ Deep Underground Could Divulge Why We’re Here

The DUNE neutrino detector will try to ascertain why matter overwhelmed antimatter in the early cosmos.

One of the greatest basic mysteries of the universe is why it’s occupied with anything at all. That’s because the Big Bang, the incident central to the prevailing theory explaining the existence of our cosmos, should have generated equal amounts of matter and antimatter (akin to matter, but with the opposite electric charge). The problem is that when matter and antimatter meet, they annihilate each other. So, the only way structures like stars, planets, asteroids, moons, and even our own bodies could have formed was by virtue of a massive imbalance of matter over antimatter.

Actually, this imbalance still exists today, with matter outweighing antimatter particles by about 1 billion to one. Scientists want to know what mechanism in the early cosmos led to this dominance of matter, really desperately. Till now, they’ve only observed the matter-antimatter symmetry breaking on very small scales—nowhere near big enough to explain the discrepancy. Additionally, experimentations over the last few decades have shown that the laws of the universe don’t treat matter and antimatter particles alike.

One promising technique for investigating this matter-antimatter disparity is through the incarceration of “cosmic ghost particles,” called neutrinos, and probing both their behavior and that of their antiparticles. To do this, researchers must take their “ghost-hunting” operations and sophisticated detectors deep underground. The Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) is an international science “megaproject” designed specifically for this. Aim of this megaproject thriving in the Sanford Underground Research Facility a mile beneath Lead (City in South Dakota) is to explain why matter dominates the cosmos—and in turn, how our cosmos came to be. It’s scheduled to be operational in totality in 2028.

By investigating the nature of matter, DUNE could also aid us in discovering the underlying force that explains all of the forces governing our cosmos, taking us closer to fulfilling Einstein’s dream of a solitary theory uniting the physics of the impossibly small with the monstrously large.

What are neutrinos?

IN SPITE OF BEING “GHOST PARTICLES,” neutrinos are definitely not supernatural. Yet, it’s very simple to understand their depiction as the phantoms of the particle zoo. The marginally spooky nickname arose from their lack of interaction with matter—a resultant of being chargeless and virtually massless. Neutrinos originate from sources like the sun and the supernova death of massive stars. Ever since the Big Bang, they’ve been zipping around the cosmos at near-light speed, playing the role of cosmic messengers that carry information about distant and potent cosmic events and objects.