Word: existance
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...trouble with these bizarre particles is that many physicists fear that they do not exist. They have not been detected and until recently there was little hope of detecting them. But two developments have changed the situation. Nuclear reactors produce floods of neutrinos (if they exist), and such modern detecting devices as the photomultiplier tube and the liquid scintillator are about 1,000,000 times as sensitive as their predecessors...
...reduce background radiation from cosmic rays, etc. By commandeering all the lead shielding available at Hanford, they got the background count for pairs of flashes down to 2.15 a minute when the reactor was not operating. When the reactor went to work, releasing floods of neutrinos (if they exist), the count went up to 2.5 a minute...
...regards this small difference as conclusive. But they have gained experience, much of it of practical value to the bomb makers at Los Alamos. A second series of experiments will be starting soon. "Then," say Reines and Cowan, "we should be able to say definitely either that the neutrino exists or that it does not exist...
...question hang enormous issues. Physicists are already comparing the neutrino hunt with the igth century hunt for the "celestial ether," which was then considered necessary to carry waves of light through the vacuum of space. When the Michelson-Morley experiment (reported in 1887) proved that the ether does not exist, physics was thrown into confusion and had to be rescued painfully by Einstein's relativity...
...Reines and Cowan succeed in detecting neutrinos, their study may show a "fine structure" in matter that is not suspected now. It may solve mysteries about the whole universe. Most of the neutrinos that were in existence at the birth of the universe (if the universe had a birth date and if neutrinos exist) are probably still cruising round and round, passing with ease through stars and galaxies. They may form a large part of the universe...