Neutrinos were first postulated in 1930 by Wolfgang Pauli, who won the 1945 Nobel Prize in Physics. “I have done something very bad today by proposing a particle that cannot be detected,” Pauli wrote in his journal. “It is something no theorist should ever do.”
Ever since, scientists have gone to great lengths (and depths) to detect the elusive 'ghost' particles.
After placing two large Water tanks near a nuclear weapons laboratory in South Carolina in the mid-1950s, scientists measured 3 neutrinos per hour and first documented their existence.
In the late 1990's, the Super-K experiment in a deep Zinc mine in Japan documented that most neutrinos observed on Earth emanated from the sun. Collision with an atom in water created a faint blue flash.
A more sensitive detector using heavy water was installed at the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO) in a deep nickel mine in Ontario. In 2001, the three flavors (chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry) of a neutrino were discovered.
The distance from the CERN laboratory in Switzerland to Gran Sasso, Italy is approximately 450 miles as the neutrino flies. The distance from FermiLab in Illinois to the Soudan Mine in Minnesota is also approximately 450 miles traveling neutrino-style.
That's already pretty ironic (or perhaps the similar distance was preplanned from the beginning, to enable replication of each other's work).
But the best irony of all? Where was the Gold Mine located during the second half of the last century?
Lead, South Dakota
