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Earth sciences

Ghosts from within

Nature volume 436, pages 467–468 (2005)Cite this article

The first detection of geoneutrinos from beneath our feet is a landmark result. It will allow better estimation of the abundances and distributions of radioactive elements in the Earth, and of the Earth's overall heat budget.

Antineutrinos, like their counterpart neutrinos, come in three varieties, each named after the charged particle with which they are paired: electron, muon and tau. Electron antineutrinos are produced in β−-decays of an atomic nucleus that occur, for example, when potassium (40K) is transformed to the calcium isotope 40Ca, and also in the decay series of uranium (U) and thorium (Th). Neutrinos and antineutrinos are ghostly particles — they have no charge and almost no mass, and pass through most matter without interacting with it at all. Detecting them is thus extremely difficult.

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  1. Department of Geology, University of Maryland, College Park, 20742, Maryland, USA

    William F. McDonough

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  1. William F. McDonough
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McDonough, W. Ghosts from within. Nature 436, 467–468 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1038/436467a

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