Interesting, it’s actually about the IceCube Neutrino Observatory. Neutrinos are *not* cosmic rays, the writer of the piece doesn’t seem to know that. This is the third or fourth major neutrino detector experiment, the first one was in an old mine tunnel in one of the Dakotas. It didn’t pick up the predicted neutrino stream from the Sun. Next, decades later, the Japanese built one in a tank of amazingly purified water, and that led to results that didn’t nullify the Standard Model, because like the sleight-of-hand masters they are, the results were doctored to make them seem to fit. Somewhere in there was another detection experiment, I think it was it Italy (?). Dunno. And now this one. The problem for these detectors is, the background level of neutrinos — the amount that would be expected from all distant sources — has been all that’s been picked up, whereas the neutrino stream from the Sun should be swamping the detectors, and it isn’t.
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From these experiments, and the Kamiokande and Super-Kamiokande neutrino detectors in Japan, the consensus has developed in the scientific community that the reason for the observed deficit of solar neutrinos is that the neutrinos “oscillate”. In other words, the electron-flavor neutrinos that are produced in beta-decay processes in nuclear reactions in the solar interior can be transformed into the other two known neutrino flavors, those of the muon-neutrino and the tau-neutrino. These neutrinos are not produced in the sun’s nuclear reactions. In this scenario, the measured solar neutrino flux is artificially low since these other neutrino flavors are not readily observed by most neutrino detectors, and certainly not at all by the radiochemical neutrino detectors. Note that for this process to occur requires that at least one of the neutrino types must have non-zero rest mass. Since the current Standard Electroweak Model carries the assumption of massless neutrinos, proof of the existence of neutrino mass would be a major new discovery, leading to major changes in the theory – what has been dubbed “New Physics”.Whoa, I wonder if "New Physics" is anything like "New Math"? And what's your favorite neutrino flavor??? Me, I'm partial to chocolate but I didn't see it on the list. So, apparently these expensive toys are picking up solar neutrinos but not nearly what they expected, that is to say, the results were "unexpected". Imagine that. They coulda been Dim journalists. So, they're discovering something. And I suppose at some point there may actually be some useful results derived from all this target practice? Like maybe they'll discover white dwarfs or red giants or quasars(supernovae?) produce many times more proper neutrinos than yer garden variety yellowish star? They'd have something then -- wouldn't they???
I dunno Civ, it just seems to me that's some awfully expensive playtime that may ultimately produce nothing of any practical value. But you and I both know I could be wrong about that, eh?