Vraag 2 | Neutrinos are “the closest thing to nothing”. What their use? (Dutch spoken)
Last week it was announced that a neutrino from space with a record high energy has been detected off the coast of Sicily. UvA astrophysicist Aart Heijboer was closely involved in the discovery. According to Heijboer, neutrinos are ‘the closest thing to nothing’. But what is their use?
In this episode of Vraag 2 (Dutch spoken), Jip Koene visits astrophysicist and professor at the UvA Aart Heijboer at Nikhef, the National Institute of Subatomic Physics. Heijboer helped build the detector that captured the high-energy neutrino. The results of the measurement were recently published in science journal Nature.
‘Neutrinos are famous because they hardly react with matter, they go right through everything. You have to consider that right now about 60 billion neutrinos go through the nail of your thumb every second,’ said Heijboer.
Located at a depth of 3.5 kilometres in the Mediterranean Sea, off the coast of Sicily, the neutrino detector measured an energy of 220 million billion ektronvold. ‘You have to compare that to the energy of a ping-pong ball that you drop from a metre down. The fact that we can express the energy of “the closest thing to nothing” in everyday scenes is extraordinary.’
What are neutrinos exactly, where do they come from, and what is their usefulness? Listen the latest podcast episode of Vraagt 2 (Dutch spoken).
Production & presentation: Jip Koene
Final editing: Irene Schoenmacker
Music: Paolo Argento
