3 ms·
MicroBooNE experiment’s first results show no hint of a sterile neutrino
- ncmncm 5y agoMoney quote: “But that earlier data from MiniBooNE doesn’t lie. There’s something really interesting happening that we still need to explain.” So, the previously favored alternatives are falsified. We know even less now than we thought we did, which is progress. It is hard to get theoretical physicists interested in proposing new alternatives, because it takes so long to test ideas in this space that they can expect to have retired long before a Nobel committee could get interested in any outcome. But they are supposed to be interested, because if there are any Dark Matter particles, this is where they should be hiding.
- kloch 5y agoI'm confused about the term "sterile neutrino". I always thought it meant right-handed fields that would be paired with the three known left-handed neutrino fields if they were Dirac fermions. In this way they would not be seen as distinct particles below electro-weak symmetry breaking. This article and many others imply that sterile neutrinos are a "fourth generation" particle that would show up as a missing signal in oscillation experiments. Can any particle physicists browsing here that could clarify?
- mzs 5y agoshort interview: https://news.yale.edu/2021/10/27/microboone-shines-flashlight-tricky-neutrinos https://news.yale.edu/2021/10/27/microboone-shines-flashligh...