The Case of the Missing Neutrinos:
After 15 years of solar-neutrino measurements, 13% of the theoretically expected flux, or number, of neutrinos is unobserved. This is leading physicists to explore a variety of possible reasons, from the underlying nuclear physics to detector design. One proposed reason is the energetic cost of the detector material to capture a neutrino. To explore this, TITAN deployed its high-accuracy, high-precision Penning trap, the only one in the world coupled to a charge breeder. The charge breeder's removal of electrons boosted the precision of the measurements with gallium and germanium isotopes and allowed for a novel radioactive-beam purification. As reported in Physical Letters B (2013), TITAN measurements validate the final piece of the nuclear physics underpinning the predicted neutrino flux, and thus the cause of the missing neutrinos remains an open case.