A Long Search Mathematical computations started in 1993. Then the scientists analyzed the 6 million impressions left on the coating. They narrowed down the field and found four clear tracks of a tau lepton that scientists say were caused by tau neutrino collisions. Researchers celebrated Thursday by serving doughnuts in their offices. The findings have not been published in a scientific journal, but other scientists said they were confident of the results.
Tau neutrinos make tau leptons, which decay very quickly.
Their signature is what you detect. It is the latest in a series of large-scale efforts to detect the tiny cosmic bits, which scientists suspect may add up to a big chunk of the universe. In 1998, an international team of scientists in Japan, including University of Hawaii researchers, determined that neutrinos have mass, however infinitesimal. The discovery is forcing physicists to reconsider the part of the Standard Model that says neutrinos have no mass at all. The Associated Press.