Forty years of muon neutrinos

3 July 2002

Display the high resolution version

On 1 July 1962, a paper appeared in Physical Review Letters reporting experimental evidence for the existence of two distinct types of the elusive particles known as neutrinos - one associated with the well-known electron, the other with the less-familiar, heavier version of the electron, the muon. In 1988, the three leading physicists who made this discovery at the Brookhaven National Laboratory - Leon Lederman, Melvin Schwartz and Jack Steinberger - shared the Nobel Prize for physics. This image shows the "footprint" of a muon-neutrino in the water of the Super-Kamiokande detector. Imagine looking down into the cylindrical tank, 42 m deep. The dots are phototubes on the curved walls, and the coloured blocks show where light has struck a tube. The muon-neutrino has interacted in the water to create a muon which has produced a ring of light as it moves through the water faster than light does, creating Cherenkov radiation.

Credit: Super-Kamiokande/Tomasz Barszczak
Please contact person or institution named for information about permission for public or commercial use.