The Mystery of Neutrino Oscillations

Neutrino oscillations are the phenomenon where neutrinos change from one type to another as they travel.
Neutrinos come in three flavors: electron, muon, and tau.
Oscillations prove that neutrinos must have tiny but nonzero masses.
This discovery was a major surprise, since the Standard Model originally treated them as massless.
The effect was first confirmed in the late 1990s using solar and atmospheric neutrino experiments.
Neutrino oscillations explain the long-standing “solar neutrino problem”, where fewer neutrinos were detected from the Sun than expected.
Oscillations occur because the neutrino’s flavor states and mass states are not the same.
Massive underground detectors, like Super-Kamiokande in Japan, capture evidence of these transformations.
Studying oscillations may reveal why the universe is filled with matter instead of antimatter.
Neutrino oscillations remain one of the most intriguing puzzles in modern physics, pointing beyond the Standard Model.