Once I was deeply skeptical that we would ever detect such things or that the faith in fundamental physics that heartened us to make speculations which seemed like science fiction would be so vindicated. It brings home the true power of science to probe hitherto unimaginable realms of the hidden universe all around us—a universe populated not by ghosts and spirits, but by objects far more interesting.

This article was originally published with the title Why I Love Neutrinos.

7 Comments

1. 1. WilliamStoertz 08:25 AM 5/25/10

   My dad, a geologist, cosmologist, and philosopher, would keep us around the dinner table for hours every night, talking about wondrous things in the universe. He, too, especially loved neutrinos. That was over 40 years ago. I am pleased as punch to know that work has progressed to such a degree!

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2. 2. CSM Engineer 11:07 AM 5/25/10

   Why I Love Scientific American: Articles like these.
   I was recently thinking about how the neutrino inspires awe and amazement in me.
   
   I had been particularly entranced by photons since I first learned of particle-wave duality and the concepts of interpretation and entanglement. But now, I've become entirely mystified by the Neutrino. The shear magnitude of weakly-interacting solar neutrinos that are stated to pass through us constantly amazed me. I have since developed this deep ethereal attachment to Neutrinos - as if they personify characteristic ideals in particle physics.
   
   If era of the photon is expected to follow the current era of the electron, this is my official vote for the Neutrino (in all its flavors) as the next super-star particle! And articles like these, are a part of why I love Scientific American!

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3. 3. DaveInAustinTx 02:25 PM 5/25/10

   Fifty years of research should have resulted in a more efficient detector than Super-K. Has anyone attempted using laser interferometry (assuming the loss or phase change of individual photons occurs due to collision with neutrinos)?

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4. 4. derrelldurrett 04:16 PM 5/25/10

   @DaveInAustinTx: neutrinos are electrically neutral, and therefore don't interact with photons (except through a couple of extremely unlikely channels-- and by unlikely I mean far less likely than neutrinos interacting w/nuclei). So, laser interferometry isn't a meaningful way to detect neutrinos.
   
   If you could make a Z-particle "laser" (which, given their lifetime, seems unlikely, never mind the part where you'd have to create A and B states which transition by emitting Z's preferentially), you could do interferometry with that.

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5. 5. Globi 06:09 PM 5/25/10

   As a young fellow at the ETH (Switzerland) I was present at Wolfgang Pauli's lecture to the first detection of a neutrino at CERN (1956). I did'nt understand much of this particle, named by Fermi (an Italian) the "little neutron". This year I was present in a lecture about the today know properties of the Neutrinos (&) 60 years after it's postulation by Pauli. An other most amazing particle that's forms the universe.

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6. 6. morp 03:50 PM 6/17/10

   Neutrinos are the younger cousins of photons..They share an imaginary life and are killed by the same poison :mathematics

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7. 7. engel_roza 03:00 AM 10/7/11

   Neutrinos move at light speed. Photons move slower. What we call light speed is the ultimate physical speed 1/c = Sqrt[eps_0 mu_0]. Einstein's Special Relativistic formulae remain valid. Photons are bosons consisting of an electron-positron assembly. Physical mass is zero, but the mass of the composing particles not. Therefore a photon is subject to decay, which manifests itself as a slight dispersion of the photon's wave, causing a very tiny reduction of its speed. Light, manifest as photons, is measured by light in the format of photons. Actually light should be measured by neutrinos, which are fermions, not subject to dispersion in its wave front. So, the result of the CERN-scientists is correct: a neutrino is faster than a photon.

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