nútrínó

A neutrino is a fundamental subatomic particle that has no net electric charge and a very small mass. Neutrinos belong to the lepton family of particles. There are three known types, or "flavors," of neutrinos: the electron neutrino, the muon neutrino, and the tau neutrino. Each neutrino flavor is associated with a corresponding charged lepton.

Neutrinos interact very weakly with other matter, meaning they can travel vast distances through almost anything without being affected. This property makes them difficult to detect. They are produced in abundance in nuclear reactions, such as those occurring in the Sun, supernovae, and nuclear reactors. They are also created in particle accelerators and in cosmic ray interactions in the Earth's atmosphere.

The discovery of neutrinos was first proposed by Wolfgang Pauli in 1930 to explain the apparent violation of energy and momentum conservation in beta decay. They were experimentally detected decades later. The study of neutrinos has provided crucial insights into particle physics, astrophysics, and cosmology. Neutrino oscillations, the phenomenon where neutrinos change flavor as they travel, provided the first definitive evidence that neutrinos have mass, a discovery that earned the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2015. Despite their elusive nature, neutrinos are abundant in the universe and play a significant role in various physical processes.