Researchers at Indiana University have helped make a significant advance in our understanding of the universe through a partnership between two leading international neutrino experiments. Neutrinos are extremely small, nearly massless particles that constantly pass through space, planets, and even our bodies, yet rarely interact with anything. Findings published in the journal Nature move scientists closer to answering a profound question: why does the universe contain matter such as stars, planets, and life instead of being empty?

The breakthrough comes from an unprecedented joint analysis of data from the NOvA experiment in the United States and T2K in Japan. These two long distance neutrino projects are among the most sophisticated of their kind.…