A joint effort between two of the world’s largest neutrino experiments has brought scientists closer to understanding how the universe survived its violent beginnings.

The findings could reveal why matter exists at all — and why everything didn’t vanish long ago.

Scientists Unite to Explore Why the Universe Exists
A Michigan State University researcher has helped lead a groundbreaking collaboration that could bring scientists closer to understanding how the universe came to be.

For the first time, two of the world’s largest neutrino experiments — T2K in Japan and NOvA in the United States — combined their data to gain new insight into neutrinos, the ghostlike particles that constantly stream through space but almost never interact with other matter.

Their joint analysis, published in Nature, offers some of the most precise measurements ever made of how neutrinos shift between types as they travel. This achievement lays important groundwork for future experiments that could reshape our understanding of how the universe evolved — or reveal that current theories are incomplete.