How is China catching ghost particles from the ocean floor?

China's new deep-sea neutrino detector, the Hailing, aims to capture ultra-rare ghost particles that carry clues about the universe's origin.

Neutrinos, or "ghost particles," are all around us, but they are almost undetectable. They are extremely light, do not carry an electric charge, and rarely interact with anything. Pretty much like ghosts, but real. 

These unique features allowed them to escape from exploding stars, black holes and the early universe, carrying messages from places where even light can't reach.

Scientists have learned to capture them by detecting the effects of their rare weak interactions with atomic nuclei or electrons.

Up above, there's too much "noise," such as cosmic rays and radiation, but things get much calmer when you're in the sea. 

At 3,500 meters underwater, seawater acts as a natural shield, making it an ideal place to spot those faint signals.

The project, Hailing, which means the ocean bell in English, recently completed sea trials for its deployment device, a specialized flexible buoy carrier for photodetectors.

If all goes well, the first batch of detectors will be lowered into the deep sea next year, and the Hailing will start listening to the universe from the ocean floor.

Together with China's neutrino detector, the Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO), we could uncover the secrets of the universe's birth.

(Cover photo by CGTN's Liu Shaozhen)