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2024-11-11

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Neutrinos: The inscrutable “ghost particles” driving scientists crazy (arstechnica.com)

submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

12 comments fedilink hide all child comments

We haven’t pinned down the masses of any individual neutrino, and we don’t even know which ones are heavier than the others. When it comes to our ability to collect raw data, neutrinos present a triple threat: they’re incredibly lightweight (even the electron weighs over 5 million times more than all the neutrinos combined), they shift their identity as they travel (and their rate of flavor oscillation changes as they travel through different substances, so there’s no one-size-fits-all solution), and they barely interact with anything in the first place...

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago (3 children)

Man, I love looking at pictures of neutron detectors. I’d love to go inside one sometime or dive inside some of them.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Oh, totally!

Maybe bring a bed, chill for a while, talk to neutrinos.

The perfectly silent dream:

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

Within cells interlinked.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

I have trouble comprehending the size of the IceCube detector in Antarctica, which is one cubic kilometer big.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Bear in mind that the ultrapure water used in these things behave like an acid. There is a story of a dropped wrench, the remains of which were later found to have been completely dissolved.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

I don't think humans will suffer the same type of ion exchange that a wrench might from ultrapure water. Don't drink from the pool and I bet you'd be perfectly safe. Someone has to have an MSDS we can check to see if it's safe.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago (2 children)

The neutrinos are mutating!

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago

The reference if you haven't seen it.

Dara Ó Briain is a legend!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

The electrons are angry!

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Scientist: Made up a particle.

Also scientist: Can't find that made up particle.

(This is not related to the post, it's just something that pops up in my mind that I think is funny).

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Scientist: Made up a particle

Technically all particles are "made up", since the effects of the energy they carry can also be expressed as a waves too and altogether, indeed their nature in our current model is dual, see the utterly interesting double slit experiment.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

This sounds exactly like the beginning of 3 body problem