"The landmark achievement that we announce today is also a result of the fruitful international cooperation ensured by many research groups outside China, bringing to JUNO their expertise from previous liquid scintillator setups," said Gioacchino Ranucci, a professor at the University of Milano and INFN-Milano in Italy who participated in the construction of JUNO.

"The worldwide liquid scintillator community has pushed the technology to its ultimate frontier, opening the path toward the ambitious physics goals of the experiment," Ranucci added.

Prior to JUNO, China's first-generation neutrino detector, the Daya Bay Neutrino Experiment, also located in Guangdong province, operated from 2011 to 2020. It discovered the third mode of neutrino oscillation, confirming the standard three neutrino mixing paradigm. This was recognized by Science magazine as one of the Top 10 Scientific Breakthroughs of 2012.