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Exclusive insight into processes and conditions in the Earth's interior
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Scientists involved in the Borexino Collaboration, among them researches from the PRISMA+ Cluster of Excellence of Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU), have presented new results for the measurement of neutrinos originating from the interior of the Earth, so called geoneutrinos. These elusive "ghost particles" rarely interact with matter, making their detection difficult. With the newly presented analysis, the researchers have now been able to access 53 events in Borexino, which is almost twice as many as in the previous analysis of the data. The results provide an exclusive insight into processes and conditions in the Earth's interior that remain puzzling to this day.
The Earth is shining, even if it is not at all visible to the naked eye. The reason for this is geoneutrinos, which are produced in radioactive decay processes in the interior of the Earth. Every second, about one million of these elusive particles penetrate every square centimeter of our planet's surface.