Did anyone see Nova last night? Interesting show on neutrinos. The Standard Model has been set somewhat on it's ear by fairly new (ca. 2000-2001) experiments on neutrino mass, the upshot being that the neutrino is not a massless particle after all.
The ramifications are signifgicant, particularly to the question of an open of closed universe. Another surprise was that neutrinos undergo a kind of "flavor shift", with electron neutrinos switching to muon and tau neutrinos and back again as they travel through space!
Another ramification seems to be that all matter in the universe is a decay product of neutrinos. This may help to explain the preference for matter over anti-matter in the universe. Neutrinos, being neutral, do not have charged anti-particles like normal matter.
Very exciting stuff to me anyway, since this puts a pretty big monkey-wrench in the Standard Model for the first time.
The ramifications are signifgicant, particularly to the question of an open of closed universe. Another surprise was that neutrinos undergo a kind of "flavor shift", with electron neutrinos switching to muon and tau neutrinos and back again as they travel through space!
Another ramification seems to be that all matter in the universe is a decay product of neutrinos. This may help to explain the preference for matter over anti-matter in the universe. Neutrinos, being neutral, do not have charged anti-particles like normal matter.
Very exciting stuff to me anyway, since this puts a pretty big monkey-wrench in the Standard Model for the first time.
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