As a result, the experiment may be suspended for two months this year and four months next year, the group said in a statement received Saturday by The Associated Press. The statement did not indicate how much money the government contributes to the project, and calls to the research center went unanswered. The scientists announced Friday that they had found evidence the neutrino, a tiny and elusive subatomic particle, has mass. If substantiated, the discovery could force scientists to rethink the theory that the universe began expanding at the Big Bang and will keep expanding forever. It also may help solve the mystery of why the universe isn't as heavy as scientific models indicate it should be.
Neutrinos are one of nature's basic building blocks.
They have no charge and are so small that they were previously thought to have no mass at all. To detect the particles, Japan, with some funding from the United States, built a 50,000 ton water tank a half-mile down a mine shaft in the central Japan city of Takayama. It doesn't actually allow scientists to capture neutrinos or even see them, but it can detect and measure the debris left by collisions between neutrinos and subatomic particles in the water. The scientists don't know how much mass a neutrino has, but suspect they are many billions of times lighter than an electron, the particle with the smallest known mass. All rights reserved.