Low-Energy Neutrinos Detected In Real Time 73
Roland Piquepaille sends us word of first results from the Borexino detector in Italy, where an international team of more than 100 researchers has detected low-energy solar neutrinos for the first time. These results confirm recent "theories about the nature of neutrinos and the inner workings of the sun and other stars." In particular, it's now almost certain that neutrinos oscillate among three types, namely electron, muon, and tau neutrinos. The Borexino detector lies almost a mile underground near L'Aquila, Italy, and it sets new standards in the purity of the materials used in its construction.
Oops! My bad! (Score:3, Interesting)
This is the first story of Roland's that, in my opinion: 1.) Isn't blog whoring (no link back to ZDnet blog, although his home page _is_ pri - midi); and 2.) Is a story of real scientific interest; and 3.) Isn't terribly mis-represented in his summary. So even _I_ won't tag this story.... Isn't that ironic? Don't 'cha think?
It surprises me how a scientific blogger could get the minor, or sometimes major, technical details of the story he posts about wrong, but at times Roland will. But not this time
No, parent poster was correct (Score:5, Interesting)
People often suggest on /. that progress on the Internet is driven by the needs of pornographers. But it would be interesting to know how much progress in networking and databases is actually driven by the (huge) data recording and analysis needs of particle physicists. My own interest in operating systems,networks and databases was started by the need to log large amounts of data very fast from lightning strike simulation experiments.
Re:Oops! My bad! (Score:2, Interesting)
Well then, my compliments to kdawson for showing the way and doing some actual editing.
Low-Latency, Direct Communications (Score:5, Interesting)
In my view I see the ability to detect neutrinos as the first step towards a truly peerless communication system. Imagine that instead of radio waves one were to use neutrino emissions for communication. There would be no (or very little) interference (pass straight through any material) and subsequently the latency of communication from any point on the globe would be decided by the diameter not the circumference of the com point's positions on the earth - meaning that communication delays would be greatly reduced.
Imagine if any communications device could simply connect directly to any other device on the planet at low-latency with high-signal strength - wouldn't that be neat!
Re:The paper (Score:3, Interesting)
The Chernkov detectors do give you direction information which this detector does no - but the sensitivity is really impressive.
One interesting aspect of this result is that it probes the presents of 7Be, which can give us a lot of insight into how the various nuclear reactions are taking place, and at what rates. It wouldn't be possible without a confirmation of neutrino oscillation, which cuts our measured neutrino flux by a third (I believe.)
Re:Neutrinos massless = timeless, but change state (Score:2, Interesting)
Actually, that's the whole thing... these experiments which show that neutrino flavor oscillates are evidence that neutrinos DO have mass (and also, don't travel at the speed of light).
But the fact that a particle travels at the speed of light doesn't necessarily mean it can't change state. It's true, a photon would not be able to measure the passage of time, but stationary observers like us can measure the passage of time as a photon travels at a finite velocity through the lab. E.g., photons CAN change state (and they are massless).
The reason that neutrino oscillations prove that neutrinos have mass is a little more subtle. We already knew there are three "flavor" neutrino states (electron, muon, tau), which we thought were fixed. But if a neutrino oscillates between these, that requires that a neutrino is actually a linear combination of these three states, and hence there must exist a separate basis of neutrino states which ARE fixed. The only way to do that is if these separate three states are mass states, which must be fixed because of conservation of energy. So, a neutrino is created in the sun with a definite mass state and possibly definite flavor state, but as it travels the mass cannot change, and so the flavor must oscillate. A similar relation between mass and flavor exists for the quarks.
Re:Spoon (Score:1, Interesting)
No Windows in Vista here @ LNGS!