- 4393 - NEUTRINO DISCOVERIES - much more to learn? - Neutrinos are elementary particles with no charge and very little mass, which are extremely difficult to study due to their very weak interaction with matter. Yet pinning down the physical properties of neutrinos is of paramount importance to scientists attempting to understand the fundamental building blocks of Nature.
-------------------------- 4393 -
NEUTRINO DISCOVERIES - much
more to learn?
-
- According to the standard Big Bang model,
neutrinos permeate the Universe at a density of about 150 per cubic centimeter.
The Earth is therefore immersed in an ocean of neutrinos, without us ever
noticing.
-
- Although it is impossible to measure this
“Cosmic Neutrino Background” directly with present-day technology, physicists
predict that ripples or waves in it have an impact on the growth of structures
in the Universe.
-
- The study of neutrinos, showing that
theories of the infinitely large (cosmology) and the infinitely small (particle
physics) are in agreement. This
research provides important new evidence in favor of the current cosmological
model, unifying it with fundamental physics theories.
-
- Cosmology is becoming a more and more
powerful laboratory where physics not easily accessible on Earth can be tested
and verified. The high quality of recent cosmological data allows us to
investigate neutrinos in the cosmological framework, obtaining measurements
which are competitive with, if not superior to, particle accelerator findings.
-
- The “Cosmic Neutrino Background” would tell
us plenty new things about the Universe.
The Cosmic Microwave
Background (CMB) serendipitous discovery by a pair of radio astronomers at Bell
Labs is the stuff of astronomical legend. Over the past decades, it has offered
plenty of insights into the Big Bang and the origins of our universe.
-
- But there is another, less well-known
background the “Cosmic Neutrino Background” (CvB) has been posited for years
but has yet to be found, primarily because neutrinos are notoriously difficult
to detect.
-
- Why are there three types of neutrinos? How
do they compare to one another? And one particularly painful thing for particle
physicists is what exactly their masses are.
The CvB could provide insight into all three of those questions and even
more about galaxy formation and the Big Bang itself.
-
- First, let’s tackle the weight of
neutrinos. One of the biggest questions regarding weight is whether the masses
of the three types of neutrinos are of a “normal” or “inverted” hierarchy.
Those two states change which of the three types is the “smallest.”
-
- In the normal hierarchy, the mass of the
third neutrino type is much more than the mass of the other two, which are
almost equal. In the inverted hierarchy, the masses of the first two types are
still equivalent but much more massive than that of the third type.
-
- While that long-term goal is still a long
way off, some larger-scale questions could be answered by simply understanding
the CvB more generally. Measurements of the CvB can also be complicated by
neutrinos from other sources, such as from other galaxies.
-
- If we understood the parameters of the CvB
itself, we could eliminate that part of the signal, allowing us to more closely
analyze neutrinos that were originally emitted from galaxies outside our own.
With that insight, we could prove or disprove some assumptions about the early
stages of galaxy formation, especially regarding the amount of energy they
emit.
-
- The CvB could contribute to our
understanding of the Big Bang. Given
that neutrinos play a role in everything from our understanding of dark matter
to fundamental questions about particle physics, it’s natural that more than
one discipline is trying to determine these factors for themselves.
-
- Particle physicists, who rely on
high-energy collisions in particle accelerators rather than fortuitous
collisions from neutrinos created alongside the universe, also seek to
understand their mass.
-
-
March 19, 2023 NEUTRINO DISCOVERIES
- much more to learn? 4393
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--------------------- --- Tuesday, March 19, 2024
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