CowanReines
CowanReines refers to the Cowan–Reines neutrino experiment, the first direct observation of the neutrino. In 1956, physicists Clyde L. Cowan Jr. and Frederick Reines conducted the experiment at the Los Alamos National Laboratory near a nuclear reactor in Los Alamos, New Mexico. The goal was to detect neutrinos emitted by fission processes in the reactor, providing direct confirmation of the neutrino’s existence, long predicted by Pauli and incorporated into Fermi’s theory of beta decay.
The experiment relied on the inverse beta decay reaction: anti-neutrino + proton → positron + neutron. The detector searched
Results from the measurements were in agreement with expectations for reactor anti-neutrinos, providing the first solid