3 ms·
I actually saw one of the authors present the data yesterday, one of the audience comments was indeed that this could be explained by an astrophysical neutrino
by hershkumar 29d ago
I actually saw one of the authors present the data yesterday, one of the audience comments was indeed that this could be explained by an astrophysical neutrino striking the detector (all other neutrino sources have energy thresholds much lower than the detected data), but the data on astrophysical neutrinos is sparse (in part why detectors like IceCube exist), so I believe the argument is that the chances that an astrophysical neutrino would strike the detector is negligible.
- scotty79 29d agoThank you very much for this first hand info. One might argue that chances of theoretical particle existing and showing up are at least as negligible.
- hershkumar 29d agoI think the WIMP interaction process via the models they tested and the data on astrophysical neutrinos from other detectors gives at least several(?) orders of magnitude of separation in the rate at which each would strike the detector. Of course this would not fully rule out the possibility that it is a stray neutrino.