In spite of early clues, another particle isn’t going to join the neutrinos family, with its members remaining at three, including the electron neutrino, the tau neutrino and the muon neutrino.

Published on Monday by the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, a study demonstrated that the chances of a fourth, “sterile” neutrino are very narrow. Unlike rest of the neutrinos, which hardly ever interact with matter, the sterile neutrino wasn’t believed to be interactive with matter at all, apart from probably via gravity.

In a statement, Francis Halzen, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of physics and principal investigator for the IceCube Neutrino Observatory said, “Like Elvis, people see hints of the sterile neutrino everywhere. There was this collection of hints, and theorists were convinced it exists”.

Professor Halzen said discovery of a fourth neutrino would have prompted a complete renovation of the Standard Model of particle physics, a reigning model given by scientists over how interaction between subatomic particles takes place. He added in case you will put in a fourth neutrino, everything will change.

In footage about the research, Janet Conrad, a physics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said even verifying with 99% certainty that sterile neutrinos don’t exist, however, needs physicists to analyze past their simplest models and think about what must be added. Professor Conrad said it may be just that nature is quite more complicated that though.

To confirm if the sterile neutrino exists, physicists took help of the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, a huge detector fixed in the South Pole ice. They didn’t have any way to find out particle directly so they took benefit of how it was though intervene with other neutrinos.