Science:
In the past four decades a new type of astronomy has emerged,
where instead of looking up into the sky, "telescopes" are
buried miles underground or deep under water or ice and search
not for photons (that is, light), but rather for particles
called neutrinos. Neutrinos are nearly massless particles that
interact very weakly with matter. The detection of neutrinos
emitted by the Sun and by a nearby supernova provided direct
tests of the theory of stellar evolution and led to
modifications of the standard model describing the properties
of elementary particles. At present, several very large
neutrino detectors are being constructed, aiming at the
detection of the most powerful sources of energy and particles
in the universe. The hope is that the detection of neutrinos
from these sources, which are extra-Galactic and are most
likely powered by mass accretion onto black holes, will not
only allow study of the sources, but, much like solar
neutrinos, will also provide new information about fundamental
properties of matter.
