Ever wondered how scientists catch ghost particles deep under the sea? Meet Hailing 🌊🔬, China's next-gen neutrino detector. Neutrinos are super-light, chargeless particles that zip through us all the time—but they hardly ever interact with anything. Kind of like cosmic ninjas! 👻
These tiny messengers come from exploding stars, black holes, and even the Big Bang itself, carrying secrets from places where even light can't reach. On land, cosmic rays and radiation create too much noise. But drop your detector 3,500 m underwater, and the ocean's natural shielding turns the deep sea into the perfect quiet zone for spotting faint neutrino signals.
Hailing just wrapped up its sea trials on December 1, 2025, testing a flexible buoy system loaded with super-sensitive light sensors called photodetectors. If everything checks out, the first batch of detectors will be sent down in 2026. Once in place, Hailing will start listening to the universe from the ocean floor, opening a new window on cosmic history.
Combined with data from the Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO), we could be on the brink of uncovering how the universe really began. Stay tuned—cosmic discovery is diving deeper than ever before! 🚀
Reference(s):
cgtn.com
