Physicists have detected a “ghost” particle at CERN for the first time

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**Thousands of neutrinos are being created at CERN’s large hadron collider every day — but scientists are only just now attempting to detect them**. PHOTO/VALENTIN FLAURAUD/AFP/Getty Images

CERN physicists captured a tau neutrino using a photography-like method.

Millions of barely perceptible “ghost” particles called neutrinos fly through our bodies at every second. With almost zero mass and no charge, these particles don’t even so much as tickle us.

They do, however, hold secrets that could unlock the very origins of matter itself from the universe’s first moments.

These particles are incredibly difficult to detect, but that could soon be changing. For the first time, scientists have shown that particle colliders, like those at CERN, can be used to detect these apparitions in droves. For the tau neutrino, in particular, this could bring their total detected count from only a handful to thousands.

What’s new — Particle colliders, like the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, work by slamming beams of hadron particles (e.g., protons, etc.) into each other at nearly the speed of light. As a result of these collisions, subatomic particles such as quarks or bosons are shed and caught by detectors like ATLAS. Neutrinos have always been a part of this process, but until this point, there haven’t been any experiments designed to detect them.

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