The Detector That Took 17 Years to Build Is Finally Catching the Universe’s Ghosts
Indian Defence Review••science
Key Points:
- After 17 years of development, China’s Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO) began data collection in August 2025 and has quickly delivered highly precise physics results, potentially solving the neutrino mass hierarchy puzzle.
- The 20,000-ton spherical detector, located 700 meters underground in Guangdong province, uses a 35.4-meter acrylic sphere filled with liquid scintillator and over 43,000 photomultiplier tubes to detect neutrino interactions with unprecedented sensitivity.
- JUNO has achieved 1.8 times greater precision in measuring solar neutrino oscillation parameters than previous experiments within just 59 days of operation, confirming subtle discrepancies between solar and reactor neutrino measurements.
- Extreme purity and meticulous
