Neutrinos and the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physics - Sixty Symbols

The 2015 Nobel Prize in Physics goes to Takaaki Kajita and Arthur B. McDonald for showing that Neutrinos have mass.
More Nobel winners: bit.ly/SSNobel
This video features Ed Copeland, Michael Merrifield and Meghan Gray.
More Neutrino videos: • Neutrinos - Sixty Symbols
Visit our website at www.sixtysymbols.com/
We're on Facebook at / sixtysymbols
And Twitter at / sixtysymbols
This project features scientists from The University of Nottingham
bit.ly/NottsPhysics
Sixty Symbols videos by Brady Haran
www.bradyharanblog.com
Email list: eepurl.com/YdjL9

[@squidcaps4308]

You got to love japanese: Super-Kamiokande is about 1 million times more awesome name than Sudbury Neutrino Observatory. "Suu-peeerrr... ka...mio...KANDEEE!!!!" and you expect fireballs to fly out..

[@Thror251]

+SquidCaps It's named after Mount Kamioka. The "super" is there to tell you, that it larger than the "normal" Kamiokande

[@JustOneAsbesto]

+SquidCaps You've obviously never been to Sudbury.

[@namenamington]

+SquidCaps Suuuuuudd-buuuuuuuu-RRRYYYY!

[@MrBeiragua]

+SquidCaps Both names sound like scifi stuff to me hehehe

[@squidcaps4308]

JustOneAsbesto That's the thing, the Sudbury installation looks even more scifi and awesome, you expect wormholes to appear. Both are super cool thou. Which i guess makes me supernerd.

[@mighty8357]

I absolutely love videos containing Professor Copeland :)

[@daveangels]

he is hilarious, I could watch him for hours!

[@Draxis32]

+Phil Diesch His explanation power is extraordinary huge taking into account the ever so strong analytical area that he studies, Theoretical Physics.

[@VoidMoth]

+Phil Diesch he is not so easy to get contained though :)

[@damonedwards1544]

I know. He's such a likable guy. Seems to take real joy in his work.

[@BeCurieUs]

It is fascinating to me how much astrophysicist's get to know and be involved with particle physics. The really big and the really small, but still family.

[@Feynstein100]

"Neutrinos have mass? I didn't know they were even Catholic." Robert Langdon in Angels and Demons. Just seemed relevant. I go now.

[@cush6827]

Nothing from Dan Brown is ever relevant.

[@xavierpaquin]

BYE

[@murphy957]

Hello from Sudbury! I've been watching these videos for a long time now and have friends doing their PhDs in the SNOLab, it's exciting to see their work recognized on such a large scale! Even making it to one of my favourite KZbin channels!

[@Harrow_the_Ninth]

Dara Ó Briain will be in a state of shock when he hears that the neutrinos are mutating after all.

[@TedManney]

+Teensie King I'm American but I know Dara Ó Briain from watching lots of QI and a couple other shows. Is there a clip I could watch to understand the neutrino reference? Thanks very much!

[@Harrow_the_Ninth]

+TedManney He's got a famous sketch where he makes fun of some of the shoddy science in the movie "2012". It's from his show "This is the Show", about an hour or so in. Can't seem to find the exact clip, I think KZbin might be taking them down.

[@Prospekt313]

I too thought that the science in that movie was ridiculous until years later when I discovered the work of prof. Konstantin Meyl, now I'm not laughing anymore.

[@liammahon515]

Fantastic video. Meghan your notes are so perfect! I wish my notes could be so neat.

[@CJonestheSteam72]

Great video by Nottingham as ever, I always find it interesting to see the varied viewpoints of the staff due to their specialisms

[@aMulliganStew]

3:19 Dr. Grays notebeook makes this video -- gives it a sense of 'I was there.'

[@PhysicsOnline]

Brilliant explanations, I learnt a lot from that and the detail behind why the prize was awarded. Keep these videos coming.

[@Grandunifiedcelery]

Let's build Hyper Kamiokande!

[@jelmcd1]

Congratulations to Sixty Symbols for another clear and concise explanation of a very important and, for the layman, esoteric topic! all the best from this Arizona Cowboy

[@TranquilKr]

I know, Brady, you have a lot of projects other than 'Sixty Symbols', but don't you think a month's gap between two consecutive videos is too much? Love all your videos. Thank you!

[@TheBraskyHouse]

Congratulations to them. Really ground breaking work!

[@sandeepn6577]

“Then I realised they don’t make phone calls really close to the announcements, charged up my phone but still nothing” that’s hilarious 😂 😂

[@TomatoBreadOrgasm]

Dr. Gray! It's been a while. Great video, great research.

[@moapaname]

That was quick. Awesome work!

[@ClearInstructionsOnly]

Very Clear Instructions. Successfully detected Neutrino with my cat. Thank you.

[@ClearInstructionsOnly]

It is called advertisement ;)

[@IamGrimalkin]

+Clear Instruction And advertisement is something you're not supposed to do in the comments.

[@j0nthegreat]

+IamGrimalkin is there a place i can read all the rules for commenting?

[@IamGrimalkin]

j0nthegreat Well, there's a "spam" option on the comment flagging box, so I assume it isn't something you are supposed to do.

[@Calvin_OBlenis]

+IamGrimalkin Spam isn't self-promotion, it's stuff like mass posting or hawking products. I've no idea why anyone would have an issue with people advertising their channels in comments sections - what do you expect them to do? Idly wait for their videos to show up in sidebars to gain subs/views? If you don't like it just move on... KZbin sorts threads based on how many up votes and comments there are. Commenting 'don't advertise here' just helps the thread move up on the page... you're being counterproductive.

[@saber1epee0]

Waiting for this since it was announced this morning!! Love Brady/the Profs /and Minutephysics. Excited for chem tomorrow? My bet is on CRISPR

[@Zambelli-Music]

Amazing video as always!

[@NiallMcKeown]

Love love love Sixty Symbols. Keep it up!

[@EugeneKhutoryansky]

Great video, and very interesting information about neutrinos. One comment I would like to make about the discussion of the Nobel Prize, giving awards can sometimes act as a disincentive to collaboration.

[@epokhe-]

+Eugene Khutoryansky curve system all over again

[@mage1over137]

If you choose not work on a collaboration that might change our understanding of the universe because you might not get recognized by the Nobel committee, your in science for the wrong reason. Further everyone in High Energy Physics knows how the Nobel Prize works, so just being a contributing member of an experiment that won someone the prize is recognition enough.

[@funkycude57]

+Eugene Khutoryansky your videos are amazing eugene, im a big fan of them.

[@stephenphilbin3919]

+Eugene Khutoryansky It'd be nice if it was the science that was in some way appreiated rather than particular scientists. Although giving awards to experiments and projects based on how many questions it answers/raises or some other criteria probably runs the risk of giving the impression that certain fields are more valued than others.

[@redshift1976]

@@stephenphilbin3919 So it would dis-incentivise tackling difficult questions?

[@davidwilkie9551]

..memorable info, well presented.

[@dylanparker130]

fascinating - love these videos :)

[@jordanweir7187]

awesome discovery, awesome channel :D what could be better hehe

[@thehighadvisor5731]

Neutrinos are composite particles composed of a set of stable "dark matter" composite particles and have 3 stable configurations. Photons are the same but have only 1 stable configuration. Every visible object is composed of a visible part (composed of photon based systems of matter) and an invisible part composed of systems of matter smaller in size than photons - dark matter)

[@Spiderboydk]

+TheHighAdvisor These outlandish claims defies what is currently well known in the scientific community. You'll need to provide an outstanding source to be taken seriously.

[@iUpham]

Ultimate Drinking Game : Take a sip/Do a shot, every time they say the word Neutrino

[@karlmuster263]

+Upham Or one person chugs beer until "neutrino" is said, then the next person starts chugging.

[@mage1over137]

better drinking game, take a shot everytime a neutrino passes through your body. That's a million shots per second per square cm of your body.

[@CatzNGaz]

+mage davee you'd liquify your insides, and effectively disarray your body's constituting neutrinos; not to mention the *brain blast* you'd feel the following morning...Jimmy Neutrino joke too tangent?

[@LynneSkysong]

I actually know a little about this. But only because AcapellaScience did a cover of Muse's Madness called "Massless" explaining it. I highly recommend at least reading the lyrics if you want a nice overview. I love the song, though I'm also a huge Muse fan, so I'm bias.

[@TheBubbleTheory]

You are heroes! Thank you for the best entertainment on youtube!

[@my80yearoldman]

Prof McDonald is my proff from Queen's! Great guy!

[@shkotayd9749]

Crazy :O We have lived to see physics start to transcend a fundamental base of the field :O This is amazing!!

[@MD-pg1fh]

+Shkotay D If you think about the advances that have been made in the last 40 years, we can hope for so much more in the next 40 years. Especially cosmology is moving fast.

[@jeremyoberg2409]

That whistle 2:04

[@CristiNeagu]

So... we found something outside the standard model? Wow... who knows where this might take us next?

[@TheLaubum]

+Cristi Neagu I assumed this at first, but then I asked around a bit and apparently this is not "beyond the standard model". Basically the standard model did not include a neutrino having mass, because we did not know they had any, however there were theories already that tie neutrinos with mass in to the standard model. It is not known which of these theories is correct, if any, but it is likely there is a mechanism that allows these neutrinos with mass to be a part of the standard model without any contradictions.

[@CristiNeagu]

TheLaubum Currently, it doesn't fit with the standard model we have it. So it still holds. And even if there are other models that fit the mass of the neutrinos in with the standard model, that mesh won't be seamless. And to fill those gaps, new discoveries need to be made.

[@mage1over137]

Well it's technically beyond the Standard Model, but it only requires a small tweak to extend the Standard Model to include neutrino mass. The only problem is that since theses masses are tiny compared with even the electron mass, we do have a fine tuning problem, but this can natural be explained if the neutrino turns out to be it's own anti particle, Majorana particles, via the see saw mechanism which implies a super massive right handed neutrino.

[@CristiNeagu]

AwesomepianoTURTLES​ It's the best thing we have to explain anything. Just because you don't understand it, it doesn't mean there's anything wrong with it.

[@juanpablomina1346]

+Cristi Neagu I took a physics class last semester where they told us about the experiment in Canada with heavy water and so on. Anyway, while studying for the finals, as any student worth his salt, I started thinking about stuff that wouldn't be on the finals, like this experiment and its going beyond the standard model. So I asked my teacher why wasn't anyone crying in despair because of the fact that the standard model had been shown not to work (the experiment is over 10 years old, after all). I thought it would be as important as, say, Einstein showing Newton's theory of gravitation wasn't actually correct. But he quoted Martin and Shaw's 2008 'Particle Physics': "At present we have no understanding of why the observed leptons have the masses they do. The neutrinos could have very small but finite masses compatible with the experimental bounds [...], or zero masses as was originally assumed in the standard model." "In the above discussions, we have assumed that lepton number conservation holds and can be used to identify the neutrino flavour emitted or absorbed in any weak reaction. However, in principle, lepton number violation can be induced in such reactions by the existence of neutrino oscillations [that happen if neutrinos have masses]. In practice, such effects are totally negligible in the standard model due to the short range of the weak interaction and can indeed be safely ignored." What I gathered is that the standard model doesn't predict the mass of the leptons, so the fact that neutrinos have mass doesn't really affect the model beyond correcting said masses (which are pretty tiny). But it's still a pretty cool experiment!

[@LADAIT]

Arthurd McDonald is one of the physics profs at my university, its our first Nobel prize!

[@gasser5001]

yay! meghan gray! i could list to her for hours!

[@hansjiang123]

This was uploaded on my birthday!

[@kadourimdou43]

How do they change type and why,follow up video please🔬🔭📡

[@YoureInSilico]

So what separates the different flavors from each other and how can we determine that by changing flavors the neutrinos are not moving with the speed of light?

[@TheDoctorRulesPSN]

"Pathetic little particles, hardly there at all." Haha poor little neutrinos

[@InfiniteMonkeysSA]

The video says it can be inferred that neutrinos are travelling slower than light (and so have mass) from the fact that they change colour. Is this because if they were travelling at c they effectively wouldn't experience time and so wouldn't 'have time' to change to a different type of neutrino, or is there a more complicated reason?

"A million passing through your little finger every second ... from the sun ... and that's the number" It's not the number though the traditional neutrino trope is 100 billion per thumbnail second.

[@calthmlikiseethm704]

One can only hope that this science can be of some use in the next 200 years or so.

[@adws5696]

Great!

[@vkotis]

This makes me think of how much we're not able to figure out yet.

[@harstar12345]

I WANT TO KNOW WHY THEY HAVE MASS... Now I have to sit refreshing Google Scholar until they work it out. Thanks Brady

[@braxtonec]

Great video. If earth detectors register about 30% of the expected value, representing the high energy neutrinos, does Benford's Law apply to the value of expected 'second place' energy neutrinos and so on?

[@RoySchl]

so if they turn into each other but but the µneutrino has more mass then the eneutrino, where does that mass then come from? it would make sense if the heavier ones turn into lighter ones and shed some other particle or something, but how to turn a lighter one into a heavier one?

[@spoonikle]

+Zamuroy they ARE particles they cant be broken into smaller parts on their own. mass is measure of the total energy in the particle, so it could be as it converts to the heavier neutrinos it slows down or gains mass from interactions with other particles What gives them mass is now a complete mystery this discovery has broken the standard model.

[@Pulsar77]

+Zamuroy Part of their kinetic energy is converted into mass, and vice versa. If a lighter neutrino changes into a heavier one, it will slow down slightly. If it changes back, it speeds up again.

[@RoySchl]

Pulsar77 that makes some sense, still strange to thing something slows down on it's own via neutrino mass conversion.

[@Pulsar77]

OficjalnyKrwiopijca But surely the total energy of a neutrino doesn't change when it's oscillating? So if the rest mass changes, wouldn't the kinetic energy change as well? My (perhaps naive) assumption would be that an oscillation produces an acceleration, although admittedly I'm applying classical physics to a quantum phenomenon. I'm no expert in particle physics...

[@RoySchl]

OficjalnyKrwiopijca thanks for writing all this, still leaves my confused as to how different polarization (i know it is just an analogy) can have different mass, i guess i should do some reading up on it myself until i get it.

[@Zorgoban]

What is the maximum mass a particle is allowed to have to still be able to travel at the speed of light?

[@mina86]

IIRC, in 1997 a spike of neutrinos was detected as a supernova exploded far away. However, if they have mass, they move slower than the speed of light, so shouldn’t they reach Earth way after the supernova?

[@banderi002]

+mina86 This is an interesting question. I'd like to hear the answer too.

[@yungholocaust6990]

+mina86 Nope! Neutrinos only interact via gravity and the weak force. Because they don't interact via the EM force, they're free to pass through the star unhindered, while light takes a while to get out.

[@banderi002]

yung holocaust So, you're saying the light just started traveling later on than the neutrinos, and then caught up with them for it to be detected at the very same time? That would need the distance from the star and its size to be exactly right, a pretty big coincidence to assume.

[@mrmartin988]

+mina86 They move very close to the speed of light while light from the supernova travels at c. If the difference between c and the velocity of the neutrino is very tiny, there will be only a small difference in the time it takes for them to reach us.

[@yungholocaust6990]

***** They start at the same time, and they actually weren't detected at the same time. The neutrinos were detected first, IIRC. The light has a mess of star to get through, initially, which gives the neutrinos a bit of a head start, as light interacts via the EM force, while neutrinos do not.

[@Krone37Io]

wow how are you so fast?

[@JustOneAsbesto]

+Krone Nguyen He's secretly a hedgehog.

[@simplename000]

secretly a platypus.

[@jeremyj.5687]

+Krone Nguyen He´s actually a video-neutrino, near the speed of light.

[@astropgn]

+Jeremy J. and if some cables aren't connect properly, he might also be faster than the speed of light.

[@DJSwankyCheese]

+Jeremy J. No, he IS light

[@nikkitytom]

Now I am incensed. "Pathetic little particles". Now that's unnecessarily harsh. I've loved those dear little things from the first time I read about them. The mere fact that they change flavors so sneakily and have eluded scientists' for so long is enough to deserve some respect.

[@auto_ego]

I'm going to go watch the Royal Institution's talk from Arthurt McDonald on neutrinos. I wouldn't have watched that one if I hadn't just learned he's the Nobel prize winner in charge of Sudbury.

[@AbruptAvalanche]

Does the mass of the neutrino not come from the Higgs field like all of the other particles? Also, haven't we known that neutrinos have mass for a while now? When I first heard about them a few years ago, I remember learning that they had a tiny amount of mass. All of the sources I've heard from since then have said the same thing. Was it just speculated and not confirmed back then?

[@Bunzotennis]

yas

[@thehighadvisor5731]

This is what accounts for forces and entanglements at distances far beyond the visible extent of objects

[@karlmuster263]

No, quantum mechanics cannot be explained in terms of hidden variables in classical mechanics. This has been proven experimentally (see Bell's Theorem).

[@PRINCESORH]

Please, Brady, get them to explain why if the neutrinos are changing flavours, they must all have mass? Is the only difference between the flavours of neutrinos their masses then? That is about the only inference I can make...

[@CUMBICA1970]

I was thinking so the next one will be Hyper-Kamiokande? And lo and behold I learned they're actually building a ten times larger detector with this very name haha.

[@Christian-Rankin]

I don't know if this question is even valid, but does the (uni)verse have "spin"?

[@NeonsStyleHD]

Well that is interestng... that explains it all

[@ghislainruy-longepe7408]

1/ The green book is still on the shelf 2/ now, we know where is the missing mass that suposedly holds our galaxy together and avoids all the pieces flying in the intergalactic space.

[@the_disabled_gamer2832]

Opened KZbin saw a SixtySymbols video waiting for me, went grabbed an ice cold mountain dew rolled a blunt grabbed some flammin hot cheetos, NOW i'm ready to watch !

[@hullcityafc72]

I'm not a particle phycisist so pls forgive me if my question appears dumb.. we know neutrons have mass, so why is it a surprise that their counterpart, the neutrino also has mass?

[@k_tell]

I have wondered for a while why the event in a Neutrino's life where it changes flavor implies that it has mass, but the event in a photon's life when it decays into an electron-positron pair does not imply that a photon has mass. The way this implication has been explained everywhere else I have seen it is that time dilation implies time does not pass in the reference frame of a zero rest mass particle, if time does not pass then events can't occur, so the event of a Neutrino changing flavors should mean the the Neutrino has a non zero rest mass because that is the only way time could pass in it's reference frame, albeit not very much time during, say, the trip from the Sun to the Earth. But that explanation seems to suggest to my poor understanding that photons also could not decay unless they too had non-zero rest mass, no one seems to be suggesting that, so I have always assumed I mis-understood something but I have not found anyone who could explain what it was. The privileged glimpse this video gives of Meghan's notebook suggests to me a possible answer. Her notes seem to imply that it is actually the difference in Mass between 2 flavors of Neutrino that is somehow linked to the probability of the oscillation occurring. So 1) maybe it has nothing, or very little, to do with time dilating to zero for mass less particles, 2) since pair production is a Photon decaying into 2 particles with rest mass there is as difference in mass even if the Photon has a zero rest mass, and 3) does it also mean that the different flavors must have different masses? And would it be possible of one of them to have a zero rest mass provided the other two do not?

[@eXpanderxl]

Can you, please, normalize the audio? It's all over the place :(

[@Swimmer7596]

Why are they getting their Nobel price only just now, if the discovery was made in 1998?

[@MrBeiragua]

+TheNumerOne sometimes nobel prizes have a delay. That's a little odd, though.

[@AshishXiangyiKumar]

+TheNumerOne Because the result needs to become influential and be demonstrated to be rock-solid. That means hundreds of papers citing the original papers, etc. You can't get a Nobel just for an interesting discovery.

[@Deuce1042]

+TheNumerOne Nobel Prizes are almost always won for things that people did years ago. Sometimes decades.

[@sebthefalcon]

Mosco Monster Like last year, I believe. The blue LED thing. Wasn't that research from the beginning of the Nienties?

[@Mollekylen]

+TheNumerOne That's standard fare in most cases of Nobel Prizes. There is a "backlog" of scientists that deserve the Nobel prize, but only a few will recieve it. That's why there is a gap between when the discovery is made and when they recieve the prize. Only extreme breakthrougs get to "skip" the line and be rewarded earlier. Look at the Nobel Prize in Medicine this year. Youyou Tu's breakthrough came in 1985. And Omura and Campbell were doing their research in the 70s.

[@sliver321123]

More like Ed Dopeland because he's pretty dope in these videos.

[@misjavanlaatum]

So ehm ... if they change flavour they (as far as I understand) also change mass, right? What happens to the difference?

[@DengPride]

Weren't neutrino oscillations confirmed along ago by the K2K project? Why did it take so long to award the prize? Also, why were they awarded the prize for finding that neutrinos have mass? I thought oscillations solve the Solar Neutrino Problem, but they had to accept the premise that neutrinos have mass to begin with.

[@aducksecho]

nobel prize 2016?

[@BYMYSYD]

Does neutrino oscillation violate conservation of leptonic numbers?

[@AstroMikeMerri]

No: they are all leptons, so changing from one type to another conserved the number of leptons.

[@rodluvan1976]

it was not (only?) for showing neutrinos have mass, is it? I read something short about it showing that neutrinos could change character (flip quarks or what not) edit; ah, right, it's addressed

[@EtzEchad]

If they have mass, that means they can travel at any speed slower than light. Perhaps someday someone could produce a Bose-Einstein condensate of neutrinos... I have no idea what that would mean, but it would certainly be interesting.

[@venkateshsubramanian3578]

It seems that Physicists didn't expect this to happen...would be interesting to know what specialization of Physics they actually expected to get the prize..also who would get it according to their expectations...

[@TeaDrinkingGuy]

That seminar was on the day I was born! Huh, cool.

[@unvergebeneid]

How the hell did you get this video done so quickly?

[@cosmology1237]

If neutrinos are being formed inside the sun, does that mean that any other star in the observable universe can create them(saying observable because i supposed these neutrinos would be the only ones that could reach our detectors, of course there are stars further than that)? Which means we could be getting neutrinos from other stars and not only the sun? and if that it true, how can we estimate the number of neutrinos passing through a specific point if we cant know where they are coming from

[@graduator14]

I've discovered a fusion of positrons and neutrinos: Positrinos! :p

[@banderi002]

+graduator14 It's a clever joke because positrons still yield standard electron neutrinos.

[@graduator14]

Um, yeah, I entirely meant that in my comment. ;p

[@mwethyaoz398]

Could we use neutrino to pass any information? Since is it able to be detected and stuff, could we used it to have a cheaper alternative to fiber glass?

[@yungholocaust6990]

+Mwethya Oz It would be really awesome if we could, but detecting them is extremely difficult.

[@Theraot]

+Mwethya Oz The cheapest way I can find to produce neutrinos is with radiactive materials... so nope.

[@yungholocaust6990]

***** Thinking he meant fiber optics haha. Which, he's right, if we could come up with an economical and compact way to transmit and receive information using neutrinos, it'd change the world. We probably won't, though.

[@mwethyaoz398]

+JooJoona Actually I was thinking more on space communication, since it is able to go through material, it could potentially be used to communicate even when on the other side of the moon where all the signal is block by the moon

[@yungholocaust6990]

***** Mwethya Oz Right, *if* we had a compact and economic way to send and receive neutrino signals, it might be very cool. Neutrinos would be able to pass through anything, including the earth itself, so you could send a signal to any place on earth at basically the speed of light *through the earth,* not just across the surface. Maybe there could even be potential for a truly decentralized internet with no need for infrastructure/ISPs. One can dream. :P

[@SlideRulePirate]

Super Kamiokande sounds like it should be the name of a manga heroine.

[@arothfuchs]

If the neutrino has mass AND it travels near the speed of light, according to Einstein's Theory of General Relativity wouldn't the mass be approaching infinity?

[@IamGrimalkin]

That's relativistic mass, not rest mass. If they don't say, assume they are talking about rest mass.

[@SapientPearwood]

o man, if taking notes in weekly seminars is the mark of a conscientious PhD student then I am definitely not a conscientious PhD student

[@harryandruschak2843]

And let us not forget the man who pioneered the way...Raymond Davis, Jr

[@benjhabert]

"Neutrinos are these pathetic little particles.." Haha love the phrasing

[@thehighadvisor5731]

The standard model is not altogether correct as the elementary particles are actually composite particles all of which contain mass. The granularity of our current measurements can't resolve the very small mass of photons.

[@Spiderboydk]

+TheHighAdvisor The photons don't have a rest mass - that would be a violation of relativity.

[@xThexEpicFailx]

Anyone have any insight to theories regarding how the neutrinos got their mass

[@MountainFisher]

I'm a retired biologist and truckdriver (wtf). I always liked reading about astrophysics and how many things tie together, but that gets into metaphysics that some decry never noticing their own metaphysical presuppositions. It makes me laugh to point that out to a young grad student who never gave it a second thought because he was actually fool enough to think it wasn't important. lol

[@Furioustrain]

where's everyone?

[@Andrewsarcus]

Is Douglas Gough the man who researches weather in the suns atmosphere?

[@mistag3860]

So I had an idea re. a neutrino 'sail' - a sheet of graphene, 1 atom thick is the first layer, make it 1m2. The next layer is another sheet of graphene, laid on top of the first, but moved over by the planck length. (trim to suit after 1000 layers) We know that graphene is a predictable stable lattice, so 'filling' up the gaps, between the graphene atoms'nuclei , but moving only by a planck length, is possible and does mean that we could create a (how?) thick piece of totally obscure graphene. It would stop many neutrinos, so shoot me down, is this possible, or silly? maybe we can 'sail' around solar systems, by tacking, and going about in a maritime fashion, using graphene neutrino sails. An elegant and very human if not English solution :) o9

[@storminmormin14]

So if neutrinos have mass then couldn't you use them for propulsion while maintaining a constant mass system?

[@jevansiom1]

Picking up and losing mass via interaction with virtual particles within the quantum foam

[@SpySappingMyKeyboard]

First they said neutrinos went faster than light. Then they didn't. Now they go slower light light. What's next? Neutrinos don't actually move? Neutrinos move backwards through time?

[@cn8299]

So Neutrinos CAN "mutate" like in 2012?

[@AlqGo]

The "j" in "Kajita" is not Spanish j. The phoneme "ji" is pronounced like "g": ka-g-ta.

[@Kekazen]

I honestly thought this was obvious

[@AwesomepianoTURTLES]

Then why do they spell it with a j? Btw a Spanish j is pronounced h. English and French it's j. German and Nordic languages it's y.

[@ivanhendr]

+AwesomepianoTURTLES ji as in "jumanji"

[@theskv21]

You're right, cajita in Spanish means little box.

[@OceanTree]

Btw a Japanese j is pronounced j.

[@SciStone]

if they pass through something but dont interact with it did they really pass through it or teleport and from one position to another with the object just happening to be between those locations?

[@banderi002]

+Anon Ymous Nobody knows.

[@Theraot]

+Anon Ymous it is not instantaneous, so even on your interpretation it wont be teleportation per se.

[@banderi002]

***** What's not instantaneous?

[@Theraot]

***** Their travel through space is not instantanous.

[@quietackshon]

+Anon Ymous These two experiments detected neutrinos. So they do interact with matter otherwise they wouldn't have been detected.

[@influenza99]

I like the retro photo. I guess Phd students are too busy to fuss with hair.

[@stefancharon7082]

Do neutrinos interact with gravity?

[@mrautistic2580]

very cool

[@mrautistic2580]

+Mr Autistic she was doing her PHD when I was a freshman in high school. While she was receiving frontline news on neutrinos I was building houses on my summer vacation...I didn't learn about neutrino oscillations until 2003.

[@j0nthegreat]

everything i learned about neutrinos was from TMNT

[@kanabalize]

How does this discovery has practical implications in our everyday life?