3 ms·
tl;dr the T2K collaboration published a paper in Nature [0] describing a 1/1000 certatinty that neutrinos and antineutrinos oscillate in 'identity' at a differe
by Nzen 6y ago
tl;dr the T2K collaboration published a paper in Nature [0] describing a 1/1000 certatinty that neutrinos and antineutrinos oscillate in 'identity' at a different rate. 'Oscillate identity' means they fluctuate between three types of neutrino with differing mass. They've come to this conclusion by analyzing the data from the Tokai J-PARC neutrino detector, which measures artificial neutrinos and antineutrinos alternately. The authors note that this doesn't satisfy their preferred p value (6E-6) nor would it account enough to destroy enough big bang antimatter to spare the existing matter. But, it is a promising asymmetry that gives hope for discovering more.
[0] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2177-0 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2177-0
- kadoban 6y agoIs it me or does the situation get kind of odd when you're looking for multiple asymmetries to explain the disparity? If there's multiple contributing, are they all in the same direction? If so, why becomes an even bigger question than we started with, right? Then we need a way to explain the asymmetry in the asymmetries. If that's not it, and it's a mix of asymmetries, some going one way some the other, how does that on the whole end up giving us a large asymmetry one way? It almost seems like you'd need one big asymmetry that's doing the real heavy-lifting and the rest are just noise. Otherwise wouldn't you tend towards zero as you add more asymmetries with uncorrelated directions?