Jonathan Perkin, University of Sheffield, on behalf of the ACoRNE Collaboration http://www.shef.ac.uk/physics/research/pppa/research/acorne.htm
The electron is the most recognised
and well known of the Leptons
They can give us info on parts
of space no other particle can!
There are about 300
million ’s per m3 of
space. Billions pass
through your body
every second!
Some neutrinos have as much
energy (>1Joule) as a tennis ball
served from Tim Henman’s racket!
If a neutrino interacts with a nucleon in
your detector (e.g. the sea), it becomes
very excited, releasing energy in the
form of new particles
hydrophone
This locally heats the detector material
(e.g. seawater) very quickly, causing
an acoustic shock (in the sea, you
can hear this with a hydrophone)
electron
e-
e
electron neutrino
muon

muon neutrino
Some theorists think ultra high
energy (UHE) neutrinos can be
created by super massive Black
Holes at centres of galaxies
There are thought to be many
other possible sources…
Physicists are building neutrino
“telescopes” under the sea and
deep in the Antarctic ice

tau
MASS
They belong to a family of particles
physicists call “Leptons” (from the
Greek Leptos meaning fine or small)
The ANTARES
neutrino telescope
They have a very low mass and
travel at nearly the speed of light
EM radiation (light) is absorbed
Your detector must be very large in size
and scattered by objects
(~km3) and mass to catch a neutrino!
(like gas and dust) in space
Charged particle paths are bent by
galactic magnetic fields
Neutrinos are so light, and interact so
weakly they can travel in straight
trajectories from source to observer 
…located in the
Mediterranean Sea
Neutrinos are one of the fundamental
particles that make up the universe,
and one of the least understood
One of our aims is to
develop a method of
tau neutrino
simulating the heating
effect of a UHE neutrino
interaction
This will allow us to calibrate our
hydrophones to neutrino
energies
Sheffield
Neutrino
Lab
hydrophone
fish tank