Neutrino physics has measured the mass of the Earth

Scientists have re-measured the Earth.

A group of physicists in Spain found an unusual way to measure the mass of our planet.

The researchers used neutrino detector data to estimate the density of our planet and calculate its mass, writes the online edition of Chronicle.info as a reference for once again.

Neutrinos are among the most common particles in the universe, but they are hard to detect. They look like electrons, but they do not have an electric charge and their mass is almost zero. They therefore interact very little with normal matter when they travel through the Universe almost at the speed of light.

Although historically, scientists' efforts to detect neutrinos have not been so successful, the IceCube neutrino detector, which operates in Antarctica, has recently discovered the world of neutrino science. Using IceCube data throughout the year, physicists at the Institute of Corpuscular Physics (IFIC) in Valencia, Spain, have not even examined the I & # 39; inside the Earth.

For calculations, the number of neutrinos recorded by the detector during its operation was used. In this case, the researchers focused on atmospheric neutrinos, which originate in the upper layers of the Earth's atmosphere. For neutrinos, the Earth is almost transparent, but sometimes the particles continue to interact with matter and traces of these interactions are captured by the detector.

The neutrinos that appeared at the North Pole, to be recorded, had to cross the whole planet, including its nucleus, and fly at great angles only through the bark. This allowed us to calculate the distribution of mass in the volume of the planet.

During the experiment, the scientists obtained the figure 5 972E24 kg – this is the weight that the Earth weighs in the calculation of its mass in the traditional way. It turned out that the core of the planet weighs a little more than the value received.

The team has learned almost nothing new on our planet. The density maps of the Earth's inner surface, planetary mass, and moment of inertia were calculated using new data, but all results were consistent with previous measurements. So, the essence of the study was not to learn something new on Earth. Scientists wanted to learn something new about neutrinos.

"Our results demonstrate the ability of this approach to study the internal structure of the Earth, which complements the traditional methods of geophysics," the researchers write in their works. According to the authors, the new method will better understand that the internal structure of the planet is better than using traditional measurement methods.