China's Giant Underground Neutrino Detector Has Started Its Observations

Photomultipliers monitoring the sphere filled with liquid scintillator. © JUNO Collaboration

After ten years of construction, China’s giant underground neutrino detector, JUNO, has finally started its observations of neutrinos, one of the most mysterious particles in the Universe.

Although about 400 trillion neutrinos from the Sun pass through each person every second, they almost never interact with matter, which makes them extremely hard to study.

Built through an international collaboration involving CNRS teams in France, JUNO is the largest detector of its kind ever constructed. Over the next decade, it is expected to detect 40 to 60 neutrinos a day while investigating how these particles change form, a phenomenon known as neutrino oscillation.

By gathering this data, JUNO aims to shed new light on the composition and evolution of the Universe and help scientists better understand the strange world of subatomic particles.