Under the Earth’s crust, beyond concrete walls and sealed vaults, and through your own body this very second, a continuous stream of subatomic particles is passing unnoticed. These are neutrinos, products of stellar reactions, supernovae, and radioactive decay, silently traversing all matter with barely a whisper of interaction.
Hamish Robertson was a Michigan State professor with tenure in 1980. Since his postdoctoral year in 1971, he had been there, and he was happy. I want to emphasize how appreciated and content I felt there, he says. It was and still is a fantastic location. However, he had started to formulate a concept with his buddy and coworker Tom Bowles that would take him far from MSU. They were coming up with a fresh experiment to determine the mass of the mysteriously light and elusive neutrino.