PLato said,"Look to the perfection of the heavens for truth," while Aristotle said "look around you at what is, if you would know the truth" To Remember: Eskesthai
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| SOHO EIT 304 Latest Image |
In conclusion, we have a rich panorama of experiments that all make use of neutrinos as probes of exotic phenomena as well as processes which we have to measure better to gain understanding of fundamental physics as well as gather information about the universe. See:Vernon Barger: perspectives on neutrino physics May 22, 2008
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| This image presents a beautiful composite of X-rays from Chandra (red, green, and blue) and optical data from Hubble (gold) of Cassiopeia A, the remains of a massive star that exploded in a supernova. Evidence for a bizarre state of matter has been found in the dense core of the star left behind, a so-called neutron star, based on cooling observed over a decade of Chandra observations. The artist's illustration in the inset shows a cut-out of the interior of the neutron star where densities increase from the crust (orange) to the core (red) and finally to the region where the "superfluid" exists (inner red ball). X-ray: NASA/CXC/UNAM/Ioffe/D. Page, P. Shternin et al.; Optical: NASA/STScI; Illustration: NASA/CXC/M. WeissSee Also:Superfluid and superconductor discovered in star's core |
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| Illustration of Cassiopeia A Neutron Star This is an artist's impression of the neutron star at the center of the Cassiopeia A supernova remnant. The different colored layers in the cutout region show the crust (orange), the higher density core (red) and the part of the core where the neutrons are thought to be in a superfluid state (inner red ball). The blue rays emanating from the center of the star represent the copious numbers of neutrinos that are created as the core temperature falls below a critical level and a superfluid is formed. (Credit: Illustration: NASA/CXC/M.Weiss) |
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| X-ray and Optical Images of Cassiopeia A Two independent research teams studied the supernova remnant Cassiopeia A, the remains of a massive star, 11,000 light years away that would have appeared to explode about 330 years as observed from Earth. Chandra data are shown in red, green and blue along with optical data from Hubble in gold. The Chandra data revealed a rapid decline in the temperature of the ultra-dense neutron star that remained after the supernova. The data showed that it had cooled by about 4% over a ten-year period, indicating that a superfluid is forming in its core. (Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/UNAM/Ioffe/D.Page,P.Shternin et al; Optical: NASA/STScI) |
The first round of physics
Nine proposals are under consideration for the initial suite of physics experiments at DUSEL, and scientists have received $21 million in NSF funding to refine them. The proposals cover four areas of research:
In addition, scientists propose to build a generic underground facility (FAARM) that will monitor the mine's naturally occurring radioactivity, which can interfere with the search for dark matter. The facility also would measure particle emissions from various materials, and help develop and refine technologies for future underground physics experiments.
- What is the nature of dark matter? (Proposals for LZ3, COUPP, GEODM, and MAX)
- Are neutrinos their own antiparticles? (Majorana, EXO)
- How do stars create the heavy elements? (DIANA)
- What role did neutrinos play in the evolution of the universe? (LBNE)
But why are there four separate proposals for how to search for dark matter? Not knowing the nature of dark-matter particles and their interactions with ordinary matter, scientists would like to use a variety of detector materials to look for the particles and study their interactions with atoms of different sizes. The use of different technologies would also provide an independent cross check of the experimental results.
"We strongly feel we need two or more experiments," says Bernard Sadoulet of UC Berkeley, an expert on dark-matter searches. "If money were not an issue, you would build at least three experiments."
The largest experiment intended for DUSEL is the Long-Baseline Neutrino Experiment (see graphic), a project that involves both the DOE and NSF. Scientists would use the LBNE to explore whether neutrinos break one of the most fundamental laws of physics: the symmetry between matter and antimatter. In 1980, James Cronin and Val Fitch received the Nobel Prize for the observation that quarks can violate this symmetry. But the effect is too small to explain the dominance of matter over antimatter in our universe. Neutrinos might be the answer.
The LBNE scientists would generate a high-intensity neutrino beam at DOE's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, 800 miles east of Homestake, and aim it straight through the Earth at two or more enormous neutrino detectors in the DUSEL mine, each containing the equivalent of 100,000 tons of water.
Studies have shown that the rock at the 4850-foot level of the mine would support the safe construction of these caverns. In January, the LBNE experiment received first-stage approval, also known as Mission Need, from the DOE.
Lesko and his team now are combining all engineering studies and science proposals into an overall proposal for review.
"By the end of this summer, we hope to complete a preliminary design of the DUSEL facility and then integrate it with a generic suite of experiments," Lesko says. "While formal selection of the experiments will not have been made by that time, we know enough about them now that we can move forward with the preliminary design. The experiments themselves will be selected through a peer-review process, as is common in the NSF."
If all goes well, Lesko says, scientists and engineers could break ground on the major DUSEL excavations in 2013, marking the start of a new era for deep underground research in the United States. SEE:Big Plans for Deep Science
So far no WIMP interaction has been observed, so the sensitivity needs to be improved further. This will be achieved by increasing the total detector mass (and with this the probability that a WIMP interacts in the detector) and at the same time reducing the background and improving the discrimination power. This effort started in 2009 under the name SuperCDMS.
The first set of new detectors has been installed in the experimental setup at Soudan and is operating since summer 2009. First tests show that the background levels are in the expected range. Over the course of the next year all CDMS detectors will be replaced by the new larger detectors. The active mass will increase by more than a factor of three to about 15 kg.See:CDMS and SuperCDMS Experiments
It is known since the 1930's that a significant part of the mass of the universe is invisible. This invisible material has been named Dark Matter. Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) are considered as one of the most convincing explanation for this phenomenon.See:SuperCDMS Queen's Home
SNOLAB is an underground science laboratory specializing in neutrino and dark matter physics. Situated two km below the surface in the Vale Inco Creighton Mine located near Sudbury Ontario Canada, SNOLAB is an expansion of the existing facilities constructed for the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO) solar neutrino experiment. SNOLAB follows on the important achievements in neutrino physics achieved by SNO and other underground physics measurements. The primary scientific emphasis at SNOLAB will be on astroparticle physics with the principal topics being:
Low Energy Solar Neutrinos;
Neutrinoless Double Beta Decay;
Cosmic Dark Matter Searches;
Supernova Neutrino Searches.
John Updike in 1955.John Hoyer Updike (18 March 1932 – 27 January 2009) was an American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic. Updike's most famous work is his Rabbit series (Rabbit, Run; Rabbit Redux; Rabbit Is Rich; Rabbit At Rest; and Rabbit Remembered). Both Rabbit is Rich and Rabbit at Rest received the Pulitzer Prize. Describing his subject as "the American small town, Protestant middle class," Updike was widely recognized for his careful craftsmanship, his highly stylistic writing, and his prolific output, having published more than twenty-five novels and more than a dozen short story collections, as well as poetry, art criticism, literary criticism and children's books. Hundreds of his stories, reviews, and poems appeared in The New Yorker, starting in 1954. He also wrote regularly for The New York Review of Books. His work attracted a significant amount of critical attention and he was considered one of the most prominent contemporary American novelists.[2] Updike died of lung cancer on January 27, 2009.
Cosmic Gall by John Updike-Telephone Poles and Other Poems, Knopf, 1960
Neutrinos they are very small.
They have no charge and have no mass
and do not interact at all.
The earth is just a silly ball
To them, through which they simply pass,
Like dustmaids down a drafty hall
Or photons through a sheet of glass.
They snub the most exquisite gas,
Ignore the most substantial wall,
Cold-shoulder steel and sounding brass,
Insult the stallion in his stall,
And, scorning barriers of class,
Infiltrate you and me! Like tall
And painless guillotines, they fall
Down through our heads into the grass.
At night, they enter at Nepal
And pierce the lover and his lass
From underneath the bed – you call
It wonderful; I call it crass.
By classifying the neutrino interactions according to the type of neutrino involved (electron-neutrino or muon-neutrino) and counting their relative numbers as a function of the distance from their creation point, we conclude that the muon-neutrinos are "oscillating." Oscillation is the changing back and forth of a neutrino’s type as it travels through space or matter. This can occur only if the neutrino possesses mass. The Super-Kamiokande result indicates that muon-neutrinos are disappearing into undetected tau-neutrinos or perhaps some other type of neutrino (e.g., sterile-neutrino). The experiment does not determine directly the masses of the neutrinos leading to this effect, but the rate of disappearance suggests that the difference in masses between the oscillating types is very small. The primary result that we are reporting has a statistical significance of more than 5 standard deviations. An independent measurement based on upward-going muons in the detector confirms the result at the level of more than 3 standard deviations.
Commerce is of trivial import; love, faith, truth of character, the aspiration of man, these are sacred.Ralph Waldo Emerson
Trinity College Library, Dublin. (Photo: Candida Höfer.) See:In today's Media, Has the Soul taken a HiatusStill no answer on attaching to libraries severs through the laptop(wifi)? I know there are hot zones that people use, I just wanted to know what people thought about attaching themselves to the "freedom of knowledge and speed" through such a outlet.
Cartoon Model of a SNR(Supernova Remnants)When scientists refer to a spherical cow, we are poking fun at ourselves. We are admitting that some of our models or descriptions of things are far more simple than the actual object, like to say that a cow has a spherical shape. The phenomena we study are often complex, and including too many details can hinder, rather than help our understanding. Often it is useful to study a simplified model which contains only the most important general characteristics. Such a model can be more easily studied using numerical or analytical methods and then compared to observations.See:Spherical Cows There is a older version here.
As an example of this kind of thinking, say we were aliens trying to understand "humans", a strange race of beings recently discovered on a small planet orbiting a medium-sized star. We might divide them into two groups, one which grows facial hair (men), one which does not (women). Within each group there is a lot of variety - each human in the first group group can have facial hair in a wide range of colors and textures, for example. However, we think that there is some underlying reason for the gross characteristic of having or not having facial hair. We might then make more observations to try and understand why this is so. These further observations might uncover more similarities (humans in the first group have both an X and a Y chromosome while humans in the second group have two X shaped chromosomes) that are more fundamental. In astronomy we try to do the same thing.
The researchers studied cows visible on Google Earth Photo: GETTYCows automatically point to the north-Telegraph 
This image is from a computer simulation of the beginning of a gamma-ray burst. Here we see the jet 9 seconds after its creation at the center of a Wolf Rayet star by the newly formed, accreting black hole within. The jet is now just erupting through the surface of the Wolf Rayet star, which has a radius comparable to that of the sun. Blue represents regions of low mass concentration, red is denser, and yellow denser still. Note the blue and red striations behind the head of the jet. These are bounded by internal shocks.See:The Geometrics Behind the Supernova and it's History
See:Central Theme is the Sun as a related posting and subsequent comment for further elucidation of how we now see in space.Resistance is futile:)Generally the SNR looks different "in each of these different wavelengths", just like you and I look different to another human being (who looks at the visible light) then we do to a bee or a snake (who are able to detect ultraviolet and infrared light, respectively).
I am not sure if this is the same with regard to the Glast perspective that is opening up our "new window of the Universe?"
JoAnne sometime ago showed this in relation to the computerize methods used to chart measures on how we may now see the sun for example, in Gamma ray. The "Tscan method" was used in regard to Neutrino research.
Tscan ("Trivial Scanner") is an event display, traditionally called a scanner, which I developed. It is a program that shows events graphically on the computer screen.See:Trivial Scanner
It was designed to be simple ("trivial") internally, and to have a simple user interface. A lot of importance was given to giving the user a large choice of options to display events in many different ways.
Tscan proved to be a very useful tool for the development of fitters. A particularly useful feature is the ability to show custom data for every photpmultiplier tube (PMT). Instead of the usual time and charge, it can show expected charge, scattered light, likelihood, chi-squared difference, patches, and any other data that can be prepared in a text format.
Credit: Super-Kamiokande/Tomasz Barszczak Three (or more?) Cerenkov ringsMultiple rings of Cerenkov light brighten up this display of an event found in the Super-Kamiokande - neutrino detector in Japan. The pattern of rings - produced when electrically charged particles travel faster through the water in the detector than light does - is similar to the result if a proton had decayed into a positron and a neutral pion. The pion would decay immediately to two gamma-ray photons that would produce fuzzy rings, while the positron would shoot off in the opposite direction to produce a clearer ring. Such kinds of decay have been predicted by "grand unified theories" that link three of nature's fundamental forces - the strong, weak and electromagnetic forces. However, there is so far no evidence for such decays; this event, for example, did not stand up to closer scrutiny.See:Picture of the Week
Evidence for Neutrino Oscillations from the LSND ExperimentOne of the only ways to probe small neutrino masses is to search for neutrino oscillations, where a neutrino of one type (e.g. numubar ) spontaneously transforms into a neutrino of another type (e.g. nuebar ) For this phenomenon to occur, neutrinos must be massive and the apparent conservation law of lepton families must be violated. The probability for 2-flavor neutrino oscillations can then be expressed as P=sin2(2theta) sin2(1.27 m2L/E) , where theta is the mixing angle, m2 is the difference in neutrino masses squared in eV2, L is the neutrino distance in meters, and E is the neutrino energy in MeV. In 1995 the LSND experiment [1] published data showing candidate events that are consistent with numubar->nuebar oscillations. [2] Additional data are reported here that provide stronger evidence for numubar->nuebar oscillations [3] as well as evidence for numu->nue oscillations. [4] The two oscillation searches have completely different backgrounds and systematics from each other.
BATAVIA, Illinois—Scientists of the MiniBooNE1 experiment at the Department of Energy's Fermilab2 today (April 11) announced their first findings. The MiniBooNE results resolve questions raised by observations of the LSND3 experiment in the 1990s that appeared to contradict findings of other neutrino experiments worldwide. MiniBooNE researchers showed conclusively that the LSND results could not be due to simple neutrino oscillation, a phenomenon in which one type of neutrino transforms into another type and back again.
The announcement significantly clarifies the overall picture of how neutrinos behave.
John Bahcall 1934 to 2005 See also "John Bahcall and the Neutrinos"Plato Apr 11th, 2007 at 8:47 pmSee here
the quark-gluon plasma behaves according to hydrodynamic calculations in which the matter is like a liquid that flows with no viscosity whatsoever.” See here
No cross over point? What role would Navier Stokes play in this?
Bigger is better if you’re searching for smallerThe next step will again be taken in Japan, with the new J-PARC accelerator starting in 2009 to send neutrinos almost 300 km, again to the Super-Kamiokande experiment, to probe the third neutrino mixing angle that has not yet been detected in either atmospheric or solar neutrino experiments. This may also be probed in a new experiment being proposed for the Fermilab NuMI beam. One of the ideas proposed at CERN is to probe this angle with an underwater experiment moored in the Gulf of Taranto off the coast of Italy, viewing neutrinos in a modified version of CERN's current Gran Sasso beam.See "CERN and Future Experiments"
Plato Apr 12th, 2007 at 7:31 am
See "Finiteness of String Theory and Mandelstam"We are "shadows" of the Sun's creations.
"String theory and other possibilities can distort the relative numbers of 'down' and 'up' neutrinos," said Jonathan Feng, associate professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at UC Irvine. "For example, extra dimensions may cause neutrinos to create microscopic black holes, which instantly evaporate and create spectacular showers of particles in the Earth's atmosphere and in the Antarctic ice cap. This increases the number of 'down' neutrinos detected. At the same time, the creation of black holes causes 'up' neutrinos to be caught in the Earth's crust, reducing the number of 'up' neutrinos. The relative 'up' and 'down' rates provide evidence for distortions in neutrino properties that are predicted by new theories."
Travis Stewart reports that the LHC’s ATLAS detector has seen cosmic ray events, an excellent sign that things are working as they should.
The article traces in non-technical language the historical development of our understanding of nuclear fusion reactions as the source of stellar energy, beginning with the controversy over the age of the sun and earth between Darwin and Kelvin, and including the discovery of radioactivity, the experimental demonstration that four hydrogen nuclei are heavier than a helium nucleus, and the theoretical insights provided by Einstein, Gamow, and Bethe. The concluding sections concern solar neutrino experiments that were designed to test the theory of stellar evolution and which, in the process, apparently revealed new aspects of microscopic physics.
A solar deity is a god or goddess who represents the sun, or an aspect of it. People have worshipped the sun and solar deities for all of recorded history; sun worship is also known as heliolatry. Hence, many beliefs and legends have been formed around this worship, most notably the various myths containing the "missing sun" motif from around the world. Although many sources contend that solar deities are generally male, and the brother, father, husband and/or enemy of the lunar deity (usually female), this is not cross-culturally upheld, as sun goddesses are found on every continent. Some mythologists, such as Brian Branston, therefore contend that sun goddesses are more common worldwide than their male counterparts. They also claim that the belief that solar deities are primarily male is linked to the fact that a few better known mythologies (such as those of ancient Greece and Egypt) sometimes break from this rule. The dualism of sun/male/light and moon/female/darkness is found in many (but not all) European traditions that derive from Orphic and Gnostic philosophies, with a notable exception being Germanic mythology, where the Sun is female and the Moon is male.
Sun worship is a possible origin of henotheism and ultimately monotheism. In ancient Egypt's Eighteenth Dynasty, Akhenaten's heretical Atenism used the old Aten solar deity as a symbol of a single god. The neolithic concept of a solar barge, the sun as traversing the sky in a boat, is found in ancient Egypt, with Ra and Horus. Proto-Indo-European religion has a solar chariot, the sun as traversing the sky in a chariot. At Roman Empire, a festival of the birth of the Unconquered Sun (or Dies Natalis Solis Invicti) was celebrated when the duration of daylight first begins to increase after the winter solstice, — the "rebirth" of the sun. In Germanic mythology this is Sol, in Vedic Surya and in Greek Helios and (sometimes) Apollo. Mesopotamian Shamash plays an important role during the Bronze Age, and "my Sun" is eventually used as an address to royalty. Similarly, South American cultures have emphatic Sun worship, see Inti. See also Sol Invictus.
"Observations always involve theory."Edwin Hubble
There is no branch of mathematics, however abstract, which may not some day be applied to phenomena of the real world.Nikolai Lobachevsky
Niki Sanders, a 33-year-old Las Vegas showgirl who can do incredible things with mirrors
A doppelgänger (pronunciation (help·info)) is the ghostly double of a living person. The word doppelgänger is a loanword from German, written there (as any noun) with an initial capital letter Doppelgänger, composed from doppel, meaning "double", and gänger, as "walker". In English, the word is conventionally not capitalized, and it is also common to drop the German diacritic umlaut on the letter "a" and write "doppelganger", although the correct spelling without umlaut would be "doppelgaenger".
Like many detectors, this experiment at the Fermi National Accelerator in Batavia, Illinois investigates the oscillation of neutrinos from one type to another. Since 2003, it has observed neutrinos created from protons in Fermilab's particle booster, part of the system that the lab normally employs to accelerate protons to higher energies for other experiments. MiniBooNE is a 40-foot-in-diameter spherical steel tank filled with 800 tons of mineral oil and lined with 1,280 phototubes (some of which are being adjusted in this image) that produce a flash of light when charged particles travel through them. Analyses of these light flashes are already providing tantalizing information
Current evidence shows that neutrinos do oscillate, which indicates that neutrinos do have mass. The Los Alamos data revealed a muon anti-neutrino cross over to an electron neutrino. This type of oscillation is difficult to explain using only the three known types of neutrinos. Therefore, there might be a fourth neutrino, which is currently being called a "sterile" neutrino, which interacts more weakly than the other three neutrinos.
BooNE will determine the oscillation parameters and possibly yield further information about the mass of a neutrino
481 MeV muon neutrino (MC) produces 394 MeV muon which later decays at rest into 52 MeV electron. The ring fit to the muon is outlined. Fuzzy electron ring is seen in yellow-green in lower right corner. This is perspective projection with 110 degrees opening angle, looking from a corner of the Super-Kamiokande detector (not from the event vertex). Option -show_non_hit was used to show all PMTs. Color corresponds to time PMT was hit by Cerenkov photon from the ring. Color scale is time from 830 to 1816 ns with 15.9 ns step. The time window was widened from default to clearly show the muon decay electron in different color. In the charge weighted time histogram to the right two peaks are clearly seen, one from the muon, and second one from the delayed electron from the muon decay. Size of PMT corresponds to amount of light seen by the PMT. PMTs are drawn as a flat squares even though in reality they look more like huge flattened golden light bulbs.
The neutrino detector for the Super-Kamiokande experiment in Japan contains ultrapure water surrounded by an array of thousands of photo-tubes, arranged to catch the flashes of light from neutrino interactions in the water. In 1998, researchers at "Super-K" found evidence for a small mass for neutrinos coming to earth from particle interactions in cosmic rays. If neutrinos, until recently thought to be massless, actually do have a mass, the implications will be profound, not only for particle physics but for astronomy and cosmology. At right is the MINOS collaboration at the Department of Energy’s Fermilab, before a slice of the 10,000-ton detector they will build to capture neutrino interactions. The MINOS experiment will use beams of accelerator-produced neutrinos by Fermilab's Tevatron to investigate neutrino mass.
Travis Stewart reports that the LHC’s ATLAS detector has seen cosmic ray events, an excellent sign that things are working as they should.
A major milestone for the Inner Detector project has been accomplished in early May as cosmic rays going through both the barrel Semiconductor Tracker (SCT) and Transition Radiation Tracker (TRT) have been successfully recorded in the SR1 building on the ATLAS experimental site at CERN.
top-quark masses - for which the standard model predicts such a decay - cannot be interpreted as evidence for new physics at low energy scales.
The search for the very small requires very high energies. The discoveries necessary for the electroweak unification were near the upper end of available energies in the current generation of particle accelerators. Establishing Grand Unification is beyond the practical limits of earthbound laboratories. This forces particle physicists to look outward to astrophysical phenomena which may have enough energy to shed some light on further attempts at unifying the four fundamental forces.
Professor Satyendra Nath Bose, the founder of Bose-Einstein statistics and the discoverer of the “Boson,” is well known as a giant in the world of physics and science as the man who, along with Albert Einstein, revolutionized the world of theoretical physics and showed the world a new way to imagine how the world works.
What makes the sun shine? How does the sun produce the vast amount of energy necessary to support life on earth? These questions challenged scientists for a hundred and fifty years, beginning in the middle of the nineteenth century. Theoretical physicists battled geologists and evolutionary biologists in a heated controversy over who had the correct answer.
The article traces in non-technical language the historical development of our understanding of nuclear fusion reactions as the source of stellar energy, beginning with the controversy over the age of the sun and earth between Darwin and Kelvin, and including the discovery of radioactivity, the experimental demonstration that four hydrogen nuclei are heavier than a helium nucleus, and the theoretical insights provided by Einstein, Gamow, and Bethe. The concluding sections concern solar neutrino experiments that were designed to test the theory of stellar evolution and which, in the process, apparently revealed new aspects of microscopic physics.
