Neutrinos have mass

[n2doc]

This is a question that has been a big one in the physics community...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4862112.stm

Physicists have confirmed that neutrinos, which are thought to have played a key role during the creation of the Universe, have mass. This is the first major finding of the US-based Main Injector Neutrino Oscillation Search (Minos) experiment.The findings suggest that the Standard Model, which describes how the building blocks of the Universe behave and interact, needs a revision.

The corroboration that the neutrino has mass has profound implications for particle physics. "In particle physics there is the Standard Model which describes how the fundamental building blocks of matter behave and interact with each other," explained Dr Falk Harris. "And this model tells us that neutrinos should have no mass. So the fact that we have now got independent measurements of neutrinos saying that they must have mass, means that this Standard Model is going to have be revised or superseded by something else."

In the longer term, the findings may also help us to better understand the mystery of "missing mass" in the Universe.

[Redstone]

1. They're Catholic? Damn.

I'd have figured them for Methodists.

Redstone

[northofdenali]

5. Shit, Redstone, you beat me to it.

Only I was going to use Baptists.

[Redstone]

6. Ha! I got in first for once! I was typing fast, because I knew

that subject was BEGGING for that response.

Redstone

[The_Casual_Observer]

2. I am going to go back and demand that they change the

grade I got in physics. It seems they marked my neutrino mass answer wrong after all.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

3. If they didn't have mass..... how could we save them in a

collection jar???

[msongs]

4. this is relatively OLD news....

just watched a show about this on PBS last night, so when you take into account the time it takes to put together a TV show
showing reasearch from the 1940's until recently, that makes this NOT hot off the press.

Nice to know the neutrinos have an awareness of time, however and that they are not going the speed of light.

Msongs
www.msongs.com/impeachbush.htm

[Peace Patriot]

9. The article explains that this was a confirmation experiment.

One experiment isn't enough to establish such an important piece of knowledge, with such vast implications. The recent experiment CONFIRMED the findings of a Japanese experiment of several years ago.

Yes, the argument has been going on for years--but confirmation is very important scientific news.

On this discovery may depend whether or not we can figure out if the universe is endlessly expanding, or if it will contract, or is contracting, perhaps just in some places. Since the universe seems to be packed with neutrinos, neutrinos having even a little bit of mass means that there is likely enough mass in the universe to cause the universe to stop expanding, and to contract. And what that may mean about TIME, for one thing, is mind-boggling to think of. If the universe starts contracting, will time also contract or go into reverse? Are portions of the universe already contracting, and/or reversing time? Is time a function of the expanding universe? Is this what wormholes are about? Or black holes? Places where little crinkles in the expanding fabric of space-time are occurring, due to local concentrations of mass, or the general presence of "extra" mass ("dark matter") in the region or in the universe? Little crinkles on in-folding and/or reverse time? Or no time?

The article asserts that these scientists have seen neutrinos disappear--but then some other form of neutrino appears at the target. One kind of neutrino magically transforms into another kind of neutrino. (Apparently, that is the proof that they have mass--they could not undergo or cause this transformation unless they have mass.) But what struck me about it--not being a physicist, but just reading word explanations--is, how do these scientists know that the neutrino in the target area is the same as the neutrino they had shot there (now supposedly transformed into another kind of neutrino, in the target area)? Perhaps some other medium is at work--a medium we don't know about yet--whereby the initial neutrino affects the distant neutrino, but they are not one and the same.

What "mass" may mean at such infinitesimal levels, I really have no idea. Perhaps all this does have to do with "the body and blood of Jesus Christ" and the theological 'physics' called "transubstantiation," as Redstone avers. Maybe all the voodoo and festishism around the Catholic Mass--which was VERY fetishistic when I was young (not quite as much today, but still obsessive)--has some basis in ancient stolen knowledge. (Thieves, they were--the 5th Century "fathers"--just like the Bushites and their voodoo elections, and whatever else they've stolen.) Could the "Holy Grail" be some kind of neutrino transformer?

Things are getting a bit wild here...

:silly:

[qazplm]

12. I dont think it is certain that if neutrinos have

some negligible mass, that their sheer numbers are enough to make up the missing mass or lead to a contraction.

I'd say the jury is way out on that one, and so far most of the evidence leads to the opposite.

[northofdenali]

7. You put it in a way I can (almost) understand -

My last class in physics was over 30 years ago. But it's interesting!

[necso]

8. There has been an interesting program

about neutrinos on PBS, "The Ghost Particle".

And this program does a good job of illustrating the problems associated with (the tyranny of) orthodoxy (in this case, the Standard Model) and parochialism in the sciences (and elsewhere).

In particular, when John Bahcall's model of solar neutrino production disagreed with the count of neutrinos from a contemporary experiment (Ray Davis) by roughly a factor of three (only one of the three types of neutrinos could be detected by this early experiment), the obvious path down which to seek an answer to this dilemma was in the idea that the missing 2/3s were the other types. (This was a coincidence too great just to be dismissed out of hand.)

But this contradicted the Standard Model (neutrinos were supposed to have no mass, know no time, travel at light-speed -- and the Sun supposedly only produced one (thought-to-be) invariant type of neutrinos) and was therefore heresy.

Now, however, this line of thought is "vindicated"... and there is, perhaps, a new orthodoxy.

...

One must always be prepared to reevaluate the fundaments -- and be ready to break out of any particular mindset, no matter how great its cultural/personal force.

Moreover, nothing should be taken for "fact" without being verified at least to the degree appropriate for its importance (fundaments of wide influence obviously necessitating thorough and rigorous verification), and this verification itself is often subject to error, bias, misunderstandings, misinterpretation, etc.

(Note: no hidden meanings.)

[treegiver]

10. The fundies tell me...

that those with vested interests in The Standard Model will reject this evidence, because science is just a dogmatic belief system, like Lutheranism, or even something as screwed up as Unitarianism. So get ready for a big fight.

[bemildred]

11. I assume this means rest mass.

Which suggests an interesting idea, a neutrino at rest (relatively speaking).

[SidDithers]

13. Interesting Neutrino Research being done in Sudbury, ON...

http://www.sno.phy.queensu.ca/

Sudbury is a mining area in northern Ontario. There is a neutrino lab at the bottom of an old nickel mine, 2km below the earth. The observer is a tank with 1000 tonnes of D2O on loan from Atomic Energy of Canada, surrounded by 9600 photomultipliers. It's a very cool setup. Check the link for more info.

Sid

[SteppingRazor]

14. So do neutrinos account for dark matter?

Or, despite the nigh-infinite number, does that combined total not even make a dent, given the nigh-infinitismally small mass of each neutrino? Anyone know anything about that?