3 ms·
How can we detect something that doesn't interact with anything?
by coldacid 8y ago
How can we detect something that doesn't interact with anything?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- Balero 8y agoIt does interact. Just very weakly/infrequently. So you need lots of data, over long periods.
- bufferoverflow 8y agoThe comment above is probably asking about the sterile neutrino mentioned in the article: a "sterile neutrino" that passes through matter without interacting with it
- qubex 8y agoIn the article it is mentioned that the ’detection’ occurs by subtraction: three types of neutrino (electron, muon, and tau) can be detected; a known number is being sent by the source and the neutrinos oscillate between the states as they travel. However the total comes up short, indicating that they are also transmuting into some other variety, nicknamed ’sterile’. Since the neutrinos we know about interact by means of gravity and the weak nuclear force, and the latter is how we detect them, it can be summarised that the missing neutrinos must have oscillated into a sterile state that does not interact through the weak force.
- snowwrestler 8y agoThis is what I thought too, but the article pretty clearly states that they detected too many neutrinos, not too few. > Both experiments have now reported more neutrino detections than The Standard Model's description of neutrino oscillation can explain the authors wrote in the paper. I had the same question you did: if the defining characteristic of a sterile neutrino is non-interaction, how does it get detected? My best guess is that NBC's summary of the definition of a sterile neutrino is probably wrong in a some subtle way.
- yk 8y agoIn short quantum stuff. With additional kinds of neutrinos, you get different patterns of oscillation, and the experiment is located at a spot were sterile neutrinos change the oscillation pattern in such a way that you get additional neutrinos, instead of less as one would expect if they would just have another classical oscillation mode. Perhaps a good analogue is the double slit experiment, the wavefunction interferes with itself and you get more photons at the peaks, not only less at the dark patches of the interference pattern, as one would expect in case of just blocking some of the light.
- sdenton4 8y agoGiven the source (nbc news, mainstream with basically no track record of good science reporting) I would take the language of the report with a big grain of salt.
- danbruc 8y agoSteril neutrinos really only interact via gravity. You can detect steril neutrinos by observing an excess or a deficit of active neutrinos, i.e. you could detect more than the expected number of active neutrinos due to steril neutrinos oscillating into active neutrinos but you could also detect fewer than the expected number of active neutrinos due to active neutrinos oscillating into steril neutrinos. I did not read the paper and don't know what they are measuring but it certainly could be either or even both, i.e. they could detect an excess and a deficit under differing circumstances and both could point towards the existence of steril neutrinos.
- monk_e_boy 8y agoHow come when it is an electron it doesn't just stick to other matter?