"The Comedian" name suits you well.
FReegards!
Posted on 11/04/2010 12:31:54 PM PDT by lbryce
Today physicists announced that they may have found the key to explaining dark matter in the universe. It all has to do with the potential discovery of a "sterile neutrino."
According to a release about the new study:
Neutrinos are neutral elementary particles born in the radioactive decay of other particles. The known "flavors" of neutrinos are the neutral counterparts of electrons and their heavier cousins, muons and taus. Regardless of a neutrino's original flavor, the particles constantly flip from one type to another in a phenomenon called "neutrino flavor oscillation."
An electron neutrino might become a muon neutrino, and then later an electron neutrino again. Scientists previously believed three flavors of neutrino exist. In this Mini Booster Neutrino Experiment, dubbed MiniBooNE, researchers detected more oscillations than would be possible if there were only three flavors.
"These results imply that there are either new particles or forces we had not previously imagined," said Byron Roe, professor emeritus in the Department of Physics, and an author of a paper on the results newly published online in Physical Review Letters.
"The simplest explanation involves adding new neutrino-like particles, or sterile neutrinos, which do not have the normal weak interactions."
The three known types of neutrino interact with matter primarily through the weak nuclear force, which makes them difficult to detect. It is hypothesized that this fourth flavor would not interact through the weak force, making it even harder to find.
The existence of sterile neutrinos could help explain the composition of the universe, said William Louis, a scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory who was a doctoral student of Roe's at U-M and is involved in the MiniBooNE experiment.
(Excerpt) Read more at io9.com ...
You took the words right out of my mouth!!
Every new discovery seems to throw their old theories out the window. lol.
Except evolution. They got that one perfect the first time and there is no possibility of being the slightest bit wrong. Do not touch the holy grail.
But you are right. Other than that, all theories are transient until better data is found.
lol.
yes.
Global Warming too, they just need to work out the details of a computer model
"The Comedian" name suits you well.
FReegards!
You are referring to the First Law of thermodynamics, but it says the total of mass AND ENERGY in a closed system remains constant.
But according to Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity (and our best science today), mass is merely one property time/space/energy/matter. All are interchangeable.
These “little neutral ones” seem to be multiplying. What else can they not detect?
Two days later this still makes me laugh. Thanks!
Seems like a neutrino detector would be a surefire way to win a high school science fair — under these standards. ;’)
sorry for the bad joke
this uneducated mind, who’s physics intel is limited to info learned some 40 years ago prior to ‘quarks’, is trying to understand, so, I went to the io9 article ‘The Undiscovered Particles on the Edge of Known Physics’, where I read, “sterile neutrinos... are nearly identical to neutrinos except they only interact through gravity”
in io9’s ‘The Ultimate Field Guide to Subatomic Particles” neutrinos are described as decayed neutrons, or “electron anti-neutrino”
So, are the physicists saying that it is interaction with the gravity of the SN that causes nutrinos to change to the (heavier) muons and taus, and loss of interaction that causes a reversal back to a (lighter) nutrino at a rate faster than expected? or is it the interaction with an ‘anti’ substance that changes a muon back to a nutrino? and, finally, how can an ‘anti’ be ‘serile’(neutral) ?
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