Scientists Found Ghost particle at KGF.

When Scientists Found_Ghost Particles_at KGF_Kolar Gold Fields Cosmic Experiments.

KGF - Kolar Gold Fields has an interesting story but do you know KGF was part of a global science race?

KGF had become a battleground between Homi Bhabha and a foreign scientist named Frederick Reines, In fact, I have some cool images from inside KGF in this Article.

Homi Bhabha

Frederick Reines

Let's dive in !!!

This story starts in the 1930s when Wolfgang Pauli postulated the existence of Neutrino The "Ghost particle" then,

Neutrino is an elementary particle like electron although it does have 3 different flavors it has no charge like positive or negative and doesn't interact with mostly anything and hence is very difficult to detect while you're reading this article millions of neutrinos coming from sources like sun, cosmic rays, and others went through you and you didn't even notice, many go through the earth without interacting much but in 1956 Clyde Cowan and Frederick Reines did an experiment in which they confirmed the existence of Neutrino.

but how, I just explained it's not possible to directly observe one, yes but we can indirectly observe one right,

they used nuclear reactors as a source for neutrino,

they then filled huge containers with cadmium chloride, so if a neutrino would get absorbed, the process would release a gamma-ray, thus confirming the existence of Neutrino.

not a frequent event, but then enough to confirm but before that in 1936 Homi Bhabha had submitted a very interesting paper.

He and Walter Heitler proposed a theory called Bhabha- Heitler theory of Cascades. it said then when cosmic rays hit the upper atmosphere, they knock nuclei of atoms and that releases particles like protons, neutrinos... or proton, muon, these then may hit other particle and release something else like example pion. it's okay if you don't understand this part much, don't worry, this paper wasn't taken much seriously kind off this later today has become a quite a big field of studying cosmic rays and atmosphere.

Interesting!!

then started the race to detect atmospheric Neutrinos now Frederick Reines who had detected Neutrino approached Homi Bhabha, he had formed TIFR by then, he asked for help that he wants to detect Atmospheric Neutrinos at KGF now KGF is special because if you see champion reef mine there,

its a series of tunnels at different heights this enables us to experiment at different depths upto 2km+ with a minimal background noise of other particles but when Bhabha got to know Reines is only interested in logistics support and not in a scientific collaboration he said

NOOOOOOOOO

then Bhabha decide TIFR will do this on its own, Reines choose a different path and went to South African mines, this started the rivalry and race to detect Neutrinos, then began in the 1960s TIFR - Tata Institute of Fundamental Research effort towards the experiment. I know many in the comments will go Rocket Boys, it has a lot of drama twisting, watch it for Entertainment and NOT FOR FACTS.

TIFR was being led by M.G.K Menon besides there was the University of Durham from the U.K. and Osaka University from Japan.

they wanted to detect Muons at KGF but you'll say arent we detecting Neutrinos, but I also told you it's very difficult to directly observe neutrinos, so indirectly, see when Neutrino undergoes an Inverse beta decay reaction it releases a charged Muon and if we detected a charged muon from the Horizontal sides, sides because we are not detecting Atmospheric Muons but we want one that's coming through a Neutrino they placed lead plates over the top of detectors to avoid any stray atmospheric particles and had Neon flash tubes to trace the paths, if the neutrino striking the bedrock of KGF went through an inverse beta decay then these detectors could detect if it went through them.

these had a call thing called scintillator, it's a medium that releases light when a particle interacts with it. then the dim light would be converted to a good electrical signal using photomultiplier tubes, onscreen is one of the examples,

but guess what they detected the neutrinos and confirmed their existence, but there was a problem Frederick Reines detected before them, BUTTTTTTTT but whats the point of finding if you can't understand the results and publish them on time, so although Reines team detected earlier, TIFR groups paper was submitted atleast 2 weeks before, and hence formally KGF became the official team to detect atmospheric neutrinos 1st.

this was the end of that saga.

I am sure Reines felt a lot of pain.

I'm sure some want to know what happened to the experiments later, later they started Proton Decay experiments related to grand Unification theory, spoke to one of the scientists Dr. Naba Mondal, very nice person, usually, I have seen these senior scientists are quite humble.

but later mines were shut down, now water-filled those mines are.