Weighing the universe’s most elusive particle

The silvery vacuum chamber resembles a zeppelin, the vaguely Art Deco lines of the welds between its stainless steel panels looking at once futuristic and old-fashioned. One tenth the size of the Hindenburg—but still as big as a blue whale—the vessel looms in a hangarlike building at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), seemingly ready to float away. Although it is earthbound, the chamber has an ethereal purpose: weighing the most elusive and mysterious of subatomic particles, the neutrino. Read more.