Ghost particles may hide their mass in an inaccessible hidden dimension

Neutrinos, often called ghost particles due to their extreme detection difficulty, might have their mass stored in a hidden, inaccessible dimension. This idea comes from a team of scientists at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, proposing that these matter components reside in a micrometric dimension where they store their mass.

Neutrinos are extraordinarily light, at least a million times lighter than electrons, making them one of the biggest experimental challenges in modern physics. Although they are constantly produced in nuclear processes, detecting them requires highly sophisticated tools.

All observed neutrinos exhibit a property called “left-handed chirality,” but theoretical models predict the existence of right-handed neutrinos, which have not yet been detected. The new hypothesis suggests these right-handed neutrinos could exist in an extra dimension, where they would store their mass.

This concept is part of the so-called “Dark Dimension Proposal,” an attempt to connect particle physics with the universe’s dark energy. In this scenario, dimensions are not uniform or singular but layered according to particle mass, and neutrinos could behave very differently within them.

To test this theory, scientists use the KATRIN experiment in Germany, a massive spectrometer analyzing the energy of electrons emitted during tritium decay. The presence of right-handed neutrinos in a hidden dimension could manifest as an irregularity, called a “kink,” in the energy spectrum.

The upcoming phase of KATRIN promises more precise measurements, capable of detecting these signals if they exist. Confirming right-handed neutrinos and an extra dimension would mark a revolutionary breakthrough in modern physics, opening new paths to understand matter and energy in the universe.