Who first came up with the idea for a neutrino?
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The neutrino was first postulated in 1930 by Wolfgang Pauli in order to maintain the law of conservation of energy during beta decay (see conservation laws ; radioactivity ). When a radioactive nucleus emits a beta particle (electron), the electron may have any energy from zero up to a certain maximum. Pauli suggested that when the electron has less than the maximum possible value, the remaining energy is carried away by an undetected particle, the neutrino. Its charge must be zero because a charged particle would easily be detected. Moreover, if it were charged, the law of conservation of charge would be violated during beta decay. The neutrino was named by Enrico Fermi . Further studies showed that the neutrino was also necessary to maintain the conservation laws of momentum and spin. Like the electron, the neutrino is a lepton ; it participates only in the weak decay of nuclear particles and has no role in the strong force binding nuclei together. Neutrinos are also emitted when a pion decays into a muon and in the decays of a number of other elementary particles. Neutrinos are stable and can be absorbed only by the same weak interactions through which they are created; an energetic neutrino can induce the reverse of the decay that produced it. The neutrino was not detected directly until 1956, when American physicists Frederick Reines and Clyde L. Cowan recognized them by their impact with subnuclear particles in mineral water.
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