The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has come up with a particle detector that can detect the movements of individual electrons in a radioactive gas.

The machine has been designed to measure the mass of the neutrino, which is considered to be tiny even by the standards of subatomic particles.

An article was published in Physical Review Letters with a catchy title, 'Single-Electron Detection and Spectroscopy via Relativistic Cyclotron Radiation'. Through the article, boffins explained their contribution in the efforts to measure the mass of the neutrino.

While referring to the work of Irish physicist Joseph Larmor, the abstract began, "It has been understood since 1897 that accelerating charges must emit electromagnetic radiation. Although first derived in 1904, cyclotron radiation from a single electron orbiting in a magnetic field has never been observed directly".

The boffins have demonstrated a way of single-electron detection in 'a novel radio-frequency spectrometer'. While it was not a direct observation, it has come up as an enormous development on previous means of observing the effects of neutrinos on the orbit of a lonely beta particle within a magnetic field.

The experiment called Project 8 detected the frequency of radiation and resultantly the electron's energy, which could result into a new way to measure the neutrino mass.

The essential apparatus for the study is present at the University of Washington in Seattle. It is essentially a small bottle, which is about the size of an espresso cup, and contains gaseous krypton-83 which itself is wrapped within a
1-tesla magnet.

The gas is a radioactive isotope that can produce electrons as its nuclei undergo beta decay. These electrons have been forced into a circular orbit with the help of the magnetic field and emit 'cyclotron radiation with a frequency of around 25GHz', which can be detected using 'sensitive microwave amplifiers'.

Project 8 has a fundamental idea behind it. It has been initiated to 'measure the energies of the electrons emitted in beta decay and compare them to the total energy of the decay'.