WHILE Jules Verne’s fictional characters journeyed to the centre of the Earth, in reality it is very difficult to penetrate the planet’s depths. But particles called neutrinos are able to pass through matter and could be used to gauge the density of Earth’s core.
Studying seismic waves or the planet’s orbit, for instance, can reveal how Earth’s mass is distributed. But “you know the least about the innermost parts,” says Walter Winter from the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. However, beaming neutrinos through Earth could allow physicists to accurately calculate the core’s density, because the neutrinos would interact with matter inside to a…
