The plan to establish the world's largest neutrino observatory in South Korea has fallen through. While Europe, Japan, and China are increasing their investments in neutrino observations, South Korea is lagging behind. Neutrino research was considered a field of basic science in which South Korea had global competitiveness, but the research achievements that have been painstakingly accumulated are at risk of being wasted due to a lack of government investment.
According to the science and technology community on the 26th, the plan for 14 domestic institutions to collaborate on establishing the world's largest neutrino observatory has been halted. Professor Yoon Tae of Sungkyunkwan University, who has led this project since 2018, said, "We planned to build the world's largest neutrino observatory, with a volume of 800,000㎥, 1,000 meters underground, considering Gyeongbuk Yeongcheon, Daegu Dalseong, and Gyeongnam Hapcheon as candidate sites, but it has been halted due to the lack of government investment."
Neutrinos are one of the fundamental particles that make up the universe, but they are almost massless and interact very little with other matter, earning them the nickname "ghost particles." Even now, 100 billion pass through the Earth every second for each area the size of a thumbnail. Scientists are investigating the origin and evolution of the universe through neutrinos. Neutrinos emerged right after the Big Bang and are emitted from the sun, supernovae, black holes, and neutron stars. Neutrino research has produced Nobel Prize winners four times.
Domestic scientists aimed to establish the world's largest neutrino observatory in South Korea. The Nuclear Particle Astrophysics Research Institute at Seoul National University, the Neutrino Precision Research Center at Chonnam National University, and the Basic Science Research Institute at Sungkyunkwan University held a forum in December 2023, gathering neutrino researchers from both domestic and international backgrounds. During this event, the plan to construct the world's largest neutrino observatory in the country was unveiled. A collaborative research plan with geographically close Japan was also discussed.
Professor Yoon Tae noted, "Once the domestic observatory is completed, we planned to promote international joint research by linking it with Japan's Hyper-Kamiokande observatory, with over 500 researchers collaborating from both domestic and international backgrounds." Takaki Kajita, a professor at the University of Tokyo in Japan who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2015 for neutrino research, stated during an interview with ChosunBiz at the time, "Once South Korea and Japan's next-generation neutrino observatories are completed, we will be one step closer to understanding various phenomena in the universe," and added, "By combining observational results such as light or gravitational waves, we can gain a deeper understanding of the universe."
The dream of scientists in South Korea and Japan lost momentum as the Ministry of Science and ICT did not allocate the budget needed for the project. Unlike South Korea, the United States, Europe, China, and Japan are investing substantial budgets in neutrino observations. China is set to operationalize the world's largest next-generation neutrino detector, the Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO), starting in August this year.
The United States is also pursuing the $3 billion (approximately 4.3 trillion won) neutrino excavation project DUNE, and Japan is constructing the next-generation neutrino observatory Hyper-Kamiokande. The cubic kilometer neutrino telescope KM3NeT being established in Europe recently announced its research results capturing neutrinos of the highest energy ever in Nature.
The scientific community believes that the failure of the neutrino observatory establishment plan is due not to a lack of research capability, but to problems in the way large scientific projects are pursued. South Korea has already reached a world-class level in neutrino research. Results from the underground neutrino research facility RENO at the Hanbit Nuclear Power Plant in Yeonggwang, Jeonnam, have gained international recognition, receiving the Bruno Pontecorvo Prize in 2016 and the European Physical Society Prize in 2023.
Professor Yoon said, "Overseas, large scientific projects are promoted through a bottom-up approach where the scientific community proposes and secures budgets, but in South Korea, the government determines research topics in a top-down approach, leaving neutrino observatories low on the priority list. Even though we possess world-class research capabilities, we cannot progress due to the absence of a supporting system."
In response, a Ministry of Science and ICT official said, "Large research projects require significant budgets, so policy decisions are essential, and high-level decision-making is necessary," adding that "Considering various strategic elements, a top-down approach is unavoidable."
Some have suggested that neutrino research is excluded from priorities because it does not immediately yield economic benefits. However, Professor Yoon remarked, "Neutrino research is likely to be connected to quantum computing and artificial intelligence (AI) since it studies the fundamental particles of physics," stating that "As the World Wide Web (WWW) emerged from the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), and quantum mechanics led to quantum computing, accumulating knowledge in the neutrino field could sow the seeds for future technological innovations."