I have to imagine that the great majority of scientists pay little attention to neutrons in their work. Lacking electric charge and bound to the nucleus by the strong interaction, neutrons are silent participants in most atomic- and larger-scale dynamical processes. Mainly, they serve to double the mass of atoms. Neutrons also don’t play much of a role in experiments in high-energy physics; there are no high-energy neutron accelerators, for obvious reasons. Although free neutrons are undoubtedly emerging from various violent events in the cosmos, their finite lifetime—about 15 minutes in their rest frame—severely limits the number of extraterrestrial sources that can transmit them to us directly.
Neutrons do occasionally take center stage; they figure prominently in nuclear processes such as fission and fusion and in the formation, evolution, and death of stars, including neutron stars and supernovae. In experiments, neutrons are most commonly used as weak, nondestructive scattering probes...
