highsea

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.

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Major Dad

I saw it, and it was cool. Nodded off at the part about all other matter being a decay product of neutrinos, though

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Blademaster

Yeah I saw the Nova show last night. Very interesting.

But one key question that struck me and has stuck with me ever since: How do the hell they keep background radiation away? I mean all things produce background radiation, even us! Do they completely eliminate it or do they reduce them to the point where they know that no background radiation is coming from the universe and atmosphere but only from the ground and rocks surrounding the experiment?

Another question, how did this guy or scientist keep from going nuts doing the same thing over and over doing the repitition stuff for a long time? I would go nuts in a month.

Another question: If the neutrino do have mass, then why do they travel at speed of light? If they do not but close enough to it, then why not according to the relativity equations, they do not get bigger as they go faster?

All this proves to me that with each model we generate, we only get a bigger glimpse of the picture but necessarily the whole or otherwise we violate the infinity principle. If you get the whole picture of the universe, then you are actually repudiating the infinity principle.

RustyBattleship

According to Einstein's theory, an object traveling at the speed of light would be INFINITELY thin and have INFINITE mass which would be greater than the entire universe. So, if neutrinos can travel at the speed of light and still have mass (but not infinite mass) then perhaps there is a flaw or oversight in the theory.

I have always wondered why in his famous equation he squares the speed of light. How can you square the speed of something that cannot travel faster than itself?

Oh well, I'm just an ex-sledgehammer mechanic turned structural designer. I'll leave nuclear physics up to nuclear physisists -- providing they don't vaporize the Earth first.

highsea

AFAIK, it just goes undetected. The Sudbury Experiment was the first one that could even detect all 3 types of neutrino. The neutrinos are either solar (electron) neutrinos, or ones created by the interaction of cosmic rays with the atmosphere. The exeriment was very deep underground to minimize the background noise.
Yeah, me too. Lol, I guess it takes a certain type to do this work.
Well, they don't travel at then speed of light! That's what's so remarkable. It also means that they are sensitive to time. As to the mass question, maybe the flavor shifts have something to do with it, I don't know. But traveling less than C eliminates any infinities.
And this is the way it's always been. What's really interesting to me is that this is the first real solid evidence of a problem in the Standard Model.

highsea

No problem. It's a finite quantity and therefore can be manipulated mathematically. It doesn't mean that you can travel at C^2, it just means you can calculate it.

Blademaster

But according to the equations, it requires that as you get closer to the speed of light, your mass must be so big. So if a neutrino was traveling *near* at the speed of light, its mass must be so big that it should be easily detectable or seen.

Hmm, looks like the Standard Model needs some certain tweaks, which is certainly good news because that means that there is a chance to get FTL speeds without having to overcome the time or mass paradox.