How physicists track and trap the elusive neutrino

(quantamagazine.org)

36 points | by ibobev 4 hours ago

4 comments

  • SiempreViernes 1 hour ago
    For anyone wondering about the title, by "trap" they mean "detect destructively": there are no stable neutrinos in a bottle in this article.
    • stouset 18 minutes ago
      That would be a wild thing to accomplish, given that neutrinos are created at relativistic speeds, have virtually zero mass, and don’t react with anything but gravity and the weak force.

      Whatever gravity “trap” you make is going to pale in comparison to the gravity wells around us (earth, the sun, etc) and the weak force scales exponentially with energy. So a slow-moving neutrino would interact even less with the weak force than a relativistic one.

    • Varelion 1 hour ago
      Damn it. Heart rate sky-rocketed from excitement.
  • mrguyorama 17 minutes ago
    Wonderful pictures!

    The Super Kamiokande had a terrible engineering event where the delicate sensor bulbs shattered, and the pressure delta from one shattering caused neighbors to shatter, in a chain reaction that destroyed large amounts of sensors.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YoBFjD5tn_E

    Unrelated:

    >Neutrinos come in three different “flavors” (electron, muon, and tau) and can oscillate, or switch, between them. To do so, neutrinos must have mass

    Why? What actually is "Neutrino oscillation" and why does it require the neutrino have mass? My already feeble understanding of particle and quantum physics always breaks down at these sorts of points.

    How are we sure that the neutrino is in fact a single particle that should use the same sort of mathematical machinery as all others? Am I even asking a question that means something? I know literally every physicist ever graduated has spent time thinking everything in physics is wrong and tried poking at such ideas, so I guess I'm more interested in what those kids end up finding that brings them back to "No this makes more sense" of neutrinos in the standard model.

  • ktallett 2 hours ago
    There is a good exhibit on this at the Miraikan in Odaiba, Tokyo. Detecting things and proving we detected what we detected we previously couldn't is always a fascinating exercise, especially whilst so much matter is still unrecognised.
  • semiquaver 41 minutes ago
    HN automangled the title, should have a “how” at the beginning. The change makes the headline sound like this is news, but it’s just a description of neutrino detectors.
    • dang 15 minutes ago
      Rehowed now. Thanks!