18 August

The first major science project in China that has been built through a genuine international collaboration has begun operation. Once fully complete next year, the Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino Experiment – a partnership between 19 Chinese and 16 US universities – will begin searching for the final undetermined neutrino “mixing angle”, known as θ₁₃.

Fermilab is scheduled to shut down its legendary Tevatron particle smasher next month, but scientists are navigating difficult political and financial waters to build the International Linear Collider (ILC) as the potential successor of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN.

Scientists in a lab with Daya Bay Nuclear Power Station in southern Guangdong Province have found neutrino through two detecting instruments, which is likely to provide clues to solving the mystery of why there is more matter than antimatter in the universe.

The experiment’s first completed set of twin detectors is now recording interactions of antineutrinos (antipartners of neutrinos) as they travel away from the powerful reactors of the China Guangdong Nuclear Power Group in southern China.