Outer Space
science (biology, chemistry, geology, physics, research), the natural and built environment, universal systems theory (developmental physics, evolutionary development, hierarchical substrates)
"New way to peek inside Earth: Researchers discover tiny particles from deep within planet," MSNBC, Robert Roy Britt, July 27, 2005
[Commentary by Iveta Brigis] When rocks decay radioactively, subatomic particles called geoneutrinos are released carrying a signature of its chemical origin. Neutrinos have no electric charge and negligible mass (though not non-zero), and can pass through matter unseen. Enabled by KamLAND, a Japanese tool that measures neutrino oscillation, scientists are now beginning to use these geoneutrinos to look far below the Earth's crust. Prior to this development, published in the July 28 edition of the journal Nature, researchers relied solely on seismology to further their understanding of the composition and activity of the Earth. Despite the tremendous advances in recent years in what we know about cosmology and the workings of outer space, scientists remain relatively in the dark about what is going on beneath our feet. While scientists are optimistic about the contribution the study of geoneutrinos will have to our understanding of the Earth, the current detector spots an average of one geoneutrino per month. Researchers hope to build bigger and more detectors that could increase this to one a day in coming decades.
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