In world first, European physicists snap elusive neutrino particles

0 Comments | AFP, October, 2007

PARIS (AFP) — European physicists said Tuesday they had sent an elusive particle known as a neutrino on a 730-kilometer (456-mile) trip under the Earth's crust and taken a snapshot of the instant it slammed into lab detectors.

The journey from the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Switzerland to an underground laboratory at San Grasso, central Italy, took about 2.4 milliseconds, with the particle travelling close to the speed of light, France's National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) said.

The landmark event happened on October 2 at 5:04pm (1504 GMT), it said in a press release.

Neutrinos are elementary particles that lack an electrical charge and do not appear to interact with mass, as they can travel through ordinary matter almost...