Study in darkness shedding light on cosmos

Underground neutrino research facility aims to help solve cutting-edge physics problems

A 20,000-metric-ton sphere, filled with liquid and submerged in a 12-story-tall tank 700 meters below the ground in South China, is being used by scientists to study the mysteries of the universe and how our world first came into being.

The Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory, known as JUNO for short, is located in Jiangmen, Guangdong province, and is tasked with detecting neutrinos, one of the fundamental particles that make up the universe and that are key to scientists understanding it.

Since they were first detected in 1956, neutrinos have been the most challenging particles to study, and significant breakthroughs in neutrino research have been associated with four Nobel Prizes in Physics.