Japan’s Next Neutrino Hunter Could Revolutionize Particle Physics

Japan approved construction for the world’s next largest neutrino detector. So what can we expect from it? » Subscribe to Seeker! » Watch more Elements! » Visit our shop at Japan announced its next generation neutrino detector, Hyper-Kamiokande, and it is enormous. Hyper-Kamiokande (Hyper-K) will hold 260,000 tonnes of ultrapure water—more than five times the amount contained by its already enormous sibling, the Super-Kamiokande. And construction for Hyper-K will begin in April 2020. The size of the Hyper-Kamiokande will allow it to detect unprecedented numbers of neutrinos produced by various sources — including cosmic rays, the Sun, supernovae and beams artificially produced by an existing particle accelerator. In addition to catching neutrinos, Hyper-K will monitor the water for the possible spontaneous decay of protons in atomic nuclei, which, if observed, would be a revolutionary