“mysterious particles that pass through matter without interacting with it at all”
major problem with this :
you cannot detect something that all your detection devices cant give you a reading on (requires “interaction”)
makes only theoretical any indirect ‘invisible’ effects (which then could be any number of other ‘hidden’ ‘invisible’ effects)
premature declaration?
As far back as I remember vinilla plain ‘neutrinos’ dont interact with much anyway, so might be more a case of insufficient detection devices (failure which isnt really news...) ???
Here is an interesting application of neutrino detection:
Finding clandestine reactors is not as important as monitoring known ones, says physicist Patrick Huber of Virginia Tech. Reactors give off heat that can be detected easily with infrared sensitive satellites. We knew where all the Soviet reactors are, and now we know where they are in Russia and North Korea. What we don’t always know is how and when they are being used.
In any country where international treaties allow access, Huber says, small, refrigerator-sized neutrino detectors could be placed nearby to reveal whether reactors were unexpectedly turned on or off. Moreover, he says, neutrinos from different sources have a distinctive energy signature, and that can be used to distinguish plutonium from uranium, and possibly to reveal if someone diverted plutonium from a nuclear reactor.