How the particle that led Bohr to think energy might not be conserved could lead the next revolution in physics

Neutrinos are ubiquitous, but mysterious. A Nobel prize was awarded this year for the discovery that they have mass, and undergo quantum oscillations as they travel - discoveries that fundamentally changed our understanding of physics and cosmology. A rare nuclear decay, being searched for now, might lead to a similar revolution

On the day the 2015 Physics Nobel prize was awarded for neutrino physics, I was at UCL's Mullard Space Science Laboratory (MSSL) in Holmbury St. Mary, Surrey, for a faculty meeting. By coincidence, a neutrino experiment had just left, for France.

The SuperNEMO experiment (NEMO for Neutrino Ettore Majorana Observatory, and Super because it is) is being built by an international collaboration to search for some very rare and special nuclear decays which, if observed, would have huge implications for physics and cosmology.