Spectrometry of the Earth using Neutrino Oscillations

Understand

The unknown constituents of the interior of our home planet have provoked the human imagination and driven scientific exploration.

• We herein demonstrate that large neutrino detectors could be used in the near future to significantly improve our understanding of the Earth's inner chemical composition.
• Neutrinos, which are naturally produced in the atmosphere, traverse the Earth and undergo oscillations that depend on the Earth's electron density.
• The Earth's chemical composition can be determined by combining observations from large neutrino detectors with seismic measurements of the Earth's matter density.