Showing posts with label Neutrinos. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Neutrinos. Show all posts

Friday, March 19, 2010

Neutrinoless Double Beta Decay

You don’t see what you’re seeing until you see it,” Dr. Thurston said, “but when you do see it, it lets you see many other things.Elusive Proof, Elusive Prover: A New Mathematical Mystery


The Enriched Xenon Observatory is an experiment in particle physics aiming to detect "neutrino-less double beta decay" using large amounts of xenon isotopically enriched in the isotope 136. A 200-kg detector using liquid Xe is currently being installed at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, New Mexico. Many research and development efforts are underway for a ton-scale experiment, with the goal of probing new physics and the mass of the neutrino. The Enriched Xenon Observatory

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Feynman diagram of neutrinoless double-beta decay, with two neutrons decaying to two protons. The only emitted products in this process are two electrons, which can only occur if the neutrino and antineutrino are the same particle (i.e. Majorana neutrinos) so the same neutrino can be emitted and absorbed within the nucleus. In conventional double-beta decay, two antineutrinos - one arising from each W vertex - are emitted from the nucleus, in addition to the two electrons. The detection of neutrinoless double-beta decay is thus a sensitive test of whether neutrinos are Majorana particles.


Neutrinoless double-beta decay experiments

Numerous experiments have been carried out to search for neutrinoless double-beta decay. Some recent and proposed future experiments include:

See:Direct Dark Matter Detection


 See Also: South Dakota's LUX will join the dark matter wars

Thursday, December 24, 2009

Mysterious Behavior of Neutrinos sent Straight through the Earth

This rendering depicts the future NOvA detector facility on the property. Rendering by Holabird & Root.


The NOνA experiment, a collaboration of over 180 scientists from some 28 institutions, will be the world’s most advanced neutrino experiment. NOvA physicists will address the question “What happened to the antimatter in the universe?” The Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory will send an intense neutrino beam from Fermilab in Illinois to the NOνA Detector Facility, a new international laboratory of the University of Minnesota’s School of Physics and Astronomy, in Ash River, about 40 miles southeast of International Falls, Minnesota.

Construction of the facility, supported under a cooperative agreement for research between the U.S. Department of Energy and the University of Minnesota, is expected to generate 60 to 80 jobs plus purchases of materials and services from US companies.

When the 15,000-ton NOνA detector is complete and installed at Ash River, physicists will use it to analyze the mysterious behavior of neutrinos sent straight through the earth from Fermilab in Illinois to the NOvA detector in Minnesota. The neutrinos travel the 500 miles in less than three milliseconds.

See:NOvA Neutrino Project

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Using the NuMI beam to search for electron neutrino appearance.

The NOνA Experiment (Fermilab E929) will construct a detector optimized for electron neutrino detection in the existing NuMI neutrino beam. The primary goal of the experiment is to search for evidence of muon to electron neutrino oscillations. This oscillation, if it occurs, holds the key to many of the unanswered questions in neutrino oscillation physics. In addition to providing a measurement of the last unknown mixing angle, θ13, this oscillation channel opens the possibility of seeing matter/anti-matter asymmetries in neutrinos and determination of the ordering of the neutrino mass states.See:The NOνA Experiment at Fermilab (E929)

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Geoneutrinos

Geoneutrinos, anti-electron neutrinos emanating from the earth, are expected to serve as a unique window into the interior of our planet, revealing information that is hidden from other probes. The left half of this image shows the production distribution for the geoneutrinos detected at KamLAND, and the right half shows the geologic structure. See First Measurement of Geoneutrinos at KamLAND.






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For example, when neutrinos interact with matter they produce specific kinds of other particles. Catch the neutrino at one moment, and it will interact to produce an electron. A moment later, it might interact to produce a different particle. "Neutrino mixing" describes the original mixture of waves that produces this oscillation effect.

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Sunday, December 13, 2009

SuperCDMS An Improvement on Detection

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
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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
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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.

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The Sudbury Neutrino Laboratory, located two kilometres below the surface, is the site of groundbreaking international research.

 The 17-metre-wide SNO detector in Vale Inco’s Creighton Mine.
Ernest Orlando, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Update:
Latest Results in the Search for Dark Matter
Thursday, December 17, 2009

 

 

Dark Matter Detected, or Not? Live Blogging the Seminar

by JoAnne

Tuesday, February 03, 2009

Bringing the Heavens Down to Earth

"We all are of the citizens of the Sky" Camille Flammarion


The Flammarion woodcut. Flammarion's caption translates to "A medieval missionary tells that he has found the point where heaven and Earth meet..."
The widely circulated woodcut of a man poking his head through the firmament of a flat Earth to view the mechanics of the spheres, executed in the style of the 16th century cannot be traced to an earlier source than Camille Flammarion's L'Atmosphère: Météorologie Populaire (Paris, 1888, p. 163) [38]. The woodcut illustrates the statement in the text that a medieval missionary claimed that "he reached the horizon where the Earth and the heavens met", an anecdote that may be traced back to Voltaire, but not to any known medieval source. In its original form, the woodcut included a decorative border that places it in the 19th century; in later publications, some claiming that the woodcut did, in fact, date to the 16th century, the border was removed. Flammarion, according to anecdotal evidence, had commissioned the woodcut himself. In any case, no source of the image earlier than Flammarion's book is known.


I thought I would borrow the title of this blog posting, "Bringing the Heavens Down to Earth," as it exemplifies some of the understanding I have of what is happening we point our fingers to the sky and beyond. What we shall see taking place in the earth's Environ then as we recognize Earth's Earthbound?

The ole woodcut above I think explains this nicely. It's like "breaking a barrier" that has been imposed on our thinking. Too reveal, that the experimental procedures had been progressive and laid out the understanding of where new physics shall reside. It comes after the cross over-point, and in this respect it is important that we recognize where this focus is allocated to help orientate in a most generalizable level where such experimental procedure has taken us.

Peter Steinberg, when at Quantum diaries, lead us through this.

The creepy part of these kind of discussions is that one doesn't say that RHIC collisions "create" black holes, but that nucleus-nucleus collisions, and even proton-proton collisions, are in some sense black holes, albeit black holes in some sort of "dual" space which makes the theory easier.


Cosmic rays have been long been recognized as a background to the search for rare new physics processes in collider experiments. This was the case for the LEP detectors and it will certainly be the case for ATLAS and CMS. A thorough understanding of the development of cosmic rays in the overburden of ATLAS will be a useful tool in understanding the cosmic ray background and consequently how to minimize this background.

This page is aimed at those of us who wish to use the tools developed by the group working on simulating the development of cosmic rays (mostly muons) in ATLAS with a view to studying cosmic ray backgrounds to future searches.


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See:
  • Man Looking into Outer Space
  • Cascading Showers from the Cosmos
  • Time as a Measure
  • Thursday, January 29, 2009

    Permanence of Fact in Literature

    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.


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    Current knowledge and scientific discovery help to align our thinking. They help us to recognize what had been "set in stone" in literature, as a passing thought in that day of poetry creation. So every progression in terms of knowledge has it's predecessors, and from that, the old and the new contrast each other. We know a little more.

    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.

    (italicized added for emphasis)

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    STATEMENT: EVIDENCE FOR MASSIVE NEUTRINOS FOUND by Dave Casper

    Cerenkov Radiation
    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.

    Wednesday, August 27, 2008

    Spherical Cows

    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.

    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.
    See:Spherical Cows There is a older version here.

    Now of course you must know the reason for this article and the subsequent explanation for it. I do expand this article to show some of the current understanding I have as I do my own research, and find how scientific measure is being attributed to our new views of the cosmos as observers. The measure now being reduced to computerizations.

    The researchers studied cows visible on Google Earth Photo: GETTYCows automatically point to the north-Telegraph

    Now I came across this article at Cosmic Variance by reading a blog posting written by Mark.

    Now from my perspective as I see often at Cosmic Variance "this method used" not only by Mark, but Sean Carroll as well. It is a sort of poking fun at the news article that was written. Ones I am starting to become familiar with, as I read my local paper. The information from a science perspective is being generated to the public.

    Should I become a cynic? Should I blur the lines on scientific method? Hold the scientific method against someone with a religious background, other then a humanistic one, and a sceptic to boot? Naw! I shall not be that way, and the way some others in science deal with each other. I shall respect who they are ,for who they are.:)Not my place to judge them.

    Now, is the technique used by these researches in the New Scientist article sound in it's evaluation? I leave that up to you to decide and continue from the perspective I wish to share on my blog.


    Credit: Weiqun Zhang and Stan Woosley
    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

    It captures my attention for this reason, and another, which is a trait I myself seemed to fall under. This is in terms of geometrical recognition, as the bubble, circle, whatever your fancy, to illustrate the supernova's action and it's remnants distributed into space. I have such examples to illustrate as one tries to marry the theorists to the science in a phenomenological way.

    See:Central Theme is the Sun as a related posting and subsequent comment for further elucidation of how we now see in space.


    Note: This comment below was remove from that comment section.
    Plato on Aug 27th, 2008 at 10:12 am
    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.




    Just so you know at what scale most certain.

    It is important that the chosen highlighted paragraph written in that comment section and repeated here, be seen in this light, and compared to computerize models attained from our methods of measure.

    While the idea here,I am moving away from the spherical cow, by recognizing the way in which observers now see the cosmos as we implement our methods of measure using computerized techniques.

    Tscan

    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.

    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.
    See:Trivial Scanner

    Credit: Super-Kamiokande/Tomasz Barszczak Three (or more?) Cerenkov rings

    Multiple 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

    Geometrical expression as I have come to understand is my own unique way in which geometrical expression is thought of, and I gave examples here of a discredited person and their research in regards to sonoluminescence, as an example of this feature to map the SNR explosive values. It is only by analogy which I give this relation to help one see this expression in the vacuum of space, as well as leading evolutions in regard to an example of M87 in it's is unfolding.

    The Lighthouse example can be seen here as well, and in this relation Glast measures would help to serve us to see this "new window of the universe" in the way it measures and compartmenting the computerized charting as we observe from this new perspective.

    Update:The value of a spherical cow

    Thursday, May 29, 2008

    The Plane of Simultaneity

    This blog entry was constructed to reply to the conversation that is going on in the issue of the "Block Universe."


    See:

  • Penrose and Quanglement

  • Entanglement and the New Physics




  • In the past, teleportation has only been possible with particles of light Image: Rainer Blatt



    It's useless sometimes to just lay there while these thoughts accumulate in one's mind, as one weaves together the picture that is forming, and whence it come from this unification process, and after a time, one then thinks about the abilities of mind to gather and consolidate.


    By taking advantage of quantum phenomena such as entanglement, teleportation and superposition, a quantum computer could, in principle, outperform a classical computer in certain computational tasks. Entanglement allows particles to have a much closer relationship than is possible in classical physics. For example, two photons can be entangled such that if one is horizontally polarized, the other is always vertically polarized, and vice versa, no matter how far apart they are. In quantum teleportation, complete information about the quantum state of a particle is instantaneously transferred by the sender, who is usually called Alice, to a receiver called Bob. Quantum superposition, meanwhile, allows a particle to be in two or more quantum states at the same time


    So let me begin first by saying that given this process we can connect this world line across the expanse of space, is, more or less the understanding that this is to be the means in which these new forms of communication in science are leading as we expound the future, and what it shall become in our present moments.



    See: Central theme is the Sun You can "click" on picture as well, or, use mouse to hover over image, for additional reading

    So you look at the sun, and what new ways can we can perceive and accumulating the data of what connects this "distance and time," one will be all the smarter when they realize that the results of experimental verifications are at present being given, and as such, what shall these examples serve, but to remind one that new experiences continue to bring new innovations to the forefront.

    Lightcone Projection- see mathematical basis here for the introduction of what will become the basis of determinations, the "decomposable definition" of these new forms of communication.

    The basis for these thoughts are the developing views based on the light cone. It was not my reasons alone in which such an idea was used to support an conjecture about, so, by these very reasons I thought it best to explain what such simultaneity can do as we hold these views about "distance and time" as we follow this world line across the expanse of the universe.

    The grey ellipse is moving relativistic sphere, its oblate shape due to Lorentz contraction. Colored ellipse is visual image of the sphere. Background curves are a xy-coordinates grid which is rigidly linked to the sphere. It is shown only at one moment in time.See here for reference and animations.

    Okay, so we have this event that happens in time. How are we to measure what the sun is suppose to be, if we did not have some information about the depth of perception that is needed in order to create this image for consumption?

    Such comparative views are needed that are current, and, "in experimental stages" to help us discern what it means for "Galactic Communication" which we will employ as we measure the distance of this world line.:)

    Such distances "can be elevated in my view," and such instantaneous recognitions are to be the associative values I place on how we can now see the "bulk perspective" and the graviton's condensation we can now assign to the cosmos?

    As we know from Einstein’s theory of special relativity, nothing can travel faster than c, the velocity of light in a vacuum. The speed of the light that we see generally travels with a slower velocity c/n where n is the refractive index of the medium through which we view the light (in air at sea level, n is approximately 1.00029 whereas in water n is 1.33). Highly energetic, charged particles (which are only constrained to travel slower than c) tend to radiate photons when they pass through a medium and, consequently, can suddenly find themselves in the embarrassing position of actually travelling faster than the light they produce!

    The result of this can be illustrated by considering a moving particle which emits pulses of light that expand like ripples on a pond, as shown in the Figure (right). By the time the particle is at the position indicated by the purple spot, the spherical shell of light emitted when the particle was in the blue position will have expanded to the radius indicated by the open blue circle. Likewise, the light emitted when the particle was in the green position will have expanded to the radius indicated by the open green circle, and so on. Notice that these ripples overlap with each other to form an enhanced cone of light indicated by the dotted lines. This is analogous to the idea that leads to a sonic boom when planes such as Concorde travel faster than the speed of sound in air
    See:What is Cerenkov Radiation?

    It is thusly, that such events in time produce information for us, that help us to look at the universe in new ways, and as such, information can be used to build new devices that penetrate beyond the confines we finds photons experience in their limitations.( please Phil take note of, in bold)

    Thursday, May 22, 2008

    Galactic Neutrino Communications

    Galactic Neutrino Communication by John G. Learned, Sandip Pakvasa, A. Zee

    We examine the possibility to employ neutrinos to communicate within the galaxy. We discuss various issues associated with transmission and reception, and suggest that the resonant neutrino energy near 6.3 PeV may be most appropriate. In one scheme we propose to make Z^o particles in an overtaking e^+ - e^- collider such that the resulting decay neutrinos are near the W^- resonance on electrons in the laboratory. Information is encoded via time structure of the beam. In another scheme we propose to use a 30 PeV pion accelerator to create neutrino or anti-neutrino beams. The latter encodes information via the particle/anti-particle content of the beam, as well as timing. Moreover, the latter beam requires far less power, and can be accomplished with presently foreseeable technology. Such signals from an advanced civilization, should they exist, will be eminently detectable in neutrino detectors now under construction.


    I though I'd better fill in the spots about leaving comments in places, and not showing the significance of what I am pointing to by insinuation alone.

    However, Kapusta also notes that a sufficiently advanced civilization might use pulses of neutrino superfluid for long-distance communications.
    See:Cern Courier:The right spin for a neutrino superfluid



    This of course requires that we look at what Joe Kapusta is actually doing at Cern. A comment that is "slight of hand," that shows what I am pointing too, is at the forefront of what is to come out of Cern at startup, along with the benefits of the Muon detection.

    Well you had to know, left to my own devices, the ability to pick out the information that is setting the course for humanities future, is of course great interest to me. What descending people may see of this blog, or the "tightening of the circle" against the influences from here, is of course a close mindedness that always comes at a cost. The abilities I may harbour in other areas are less of a concern to me, knowing that what I am sharing is always the work at the edges of the periphery of our vision.

    Vernon Barger: perspectives on neutrino physics Posted by dorigo

    Barger then mentioned the idea of mapping the universe with neutrinos: the idea is that active galactic nuclei (AGN) produce hadronic interactions with pions decaying to neutrinos, and there is a whole range of experiments looking at this. You could study the neutrinos coming from AGN and their flavor composition.


    So you look at the universe in "different ways" and never before had you thought to think that the constrains that are applied to self, is the limitation we settle our own points of view too. These are the "resounding factors" that work "like a Higgs" as these things gather around it. Life gathers around that "point of view." You've set the tone. Brain Cox on Ted.com, gives a nice example of Margaret Thatcher moving across the room.

    I do not know how many times I can use the word like "tone" and not have found some relevance to the psychology of the individual, and then, see it's relation out there in terms of the Lagrangian. HelioSeismology's(see sidebar and click on sun, or, other abstract picture) and how it that we can predict such events within the very sun itself and by use of SOHO. This gives us an advantage and a warning system in place in relation to sunspot activity.

    Ruffles in the Field

    So easy then to speak on the significance of the emotive struggle, and then not to find a relation to the space around us. The context of gathering thoughts and things, as they are defined as some graviton gathering in a bulk perspective of space?

    Why I glamour to the cause of those who hurt the attempts to see the world in different ways, and leave people to prognosticate to their own devices and to the call of, "let there be dragons." Gathered around then to the limitations of the thinking mind, set by others. We want people to push these boundaries, not be limited by them.



    This picture is a copy of a "16 century woodcut" copied by Camille Flammarion in 1888.


    The Flammarion woodcut. Flammarion's caption translates to "A medieval missionary tells that he has found the point where heaven and Earth meet..."
    The widely circulated woodcut of a man poking his head through the firmament of a flat Earth to view the mechanics of the spheres, executed in the style of the 16th century cannot be traced to an earlier source than Camille Flammarion's L'Atmosphère: Météorologie Populaire (Paris, 1888, p. 163) [38]. The woodcut illustrates the statement in the text that a medieval missionary claimed that "he reached the horizon where the Earth and the heavens met", an anecdote that may be traced back to Voltaire, but not to any known medieval source. In its original form, the woodcut included a decorative border that places it in the 19th century; in later publications, some claiming that the woodcut did, in fact, date to the 16th century, the border was removed. Flammarion, according to anecdotal evidence, had commissioned the woodcut himself. In any case, no source of the image earlier than Flammarion's book is known.
    See here for larger version "with caption" that has been translated above.

    Pushing back the veil of our boundaries of thought are always of interest to me and the woodcut while speculated upon is my way of expressing this attempt.

    See:

  • The Right Spin for a Neutrino Superfluid
  • Monday, April 23, 2007

    Geoneutrinos

    Geoneutrinos, anti-electron neutrinos emanating from the earth, are expected to serve as a unique window into the interior of our planet, revealing information that is hidden from other probes. The left half of this image shows the production distribution for the geoneutrinos detected at KamLAND, and the right half shows the geologic structure. See First Measurement of Geoneutrinos at KamLAND.

    Thursday, April 12, 2007

    The CrossOver Point within the Perfect Fluid?

    I had been following this research because of what I had been trying to understand when we take our understanding down to a certain level. That level is within the context of us probing the collision process for evidence of "some new physics" that we had not seen before.

    Evidence for Neutrino Oscillations from the LSND Experiment
    One 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.


    What valuation of this process allows us to think that while speaking to "probing this perfect fluid" that we had not discovered some mechanism within it, that allows us to see Coleman Mandula effects being behind, as a geometrical unfoldment from one state into another?

    If we had looked at the Genus 1 figure then what avenue would help us discern what could come from the string theory landscape and the "potential hill" discerned from the blackhole horizon? What tunnelling effect could go past the hill climbers and valley crossers to know that you could cut "right through the hill?"

    MiniBooNE opens the box

    BATAVIA, IllinoisScientists 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.


    So while I am looking for some indications as I did in the strangelet case, as, evidence of this crossover, this had to have some relation to how we seen the neutrinos in development. This was part of the development as we learnt of the history of John Bahcall.

    John Bahcall 1934 to 2005 See also "John Bahcall and the Neutrinos"


    Plato Apr 11th, 2007 at 8:47 pm

    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?
    See here

    This does not minimize the work we see of Gran Sasso in relation to the LHC project.

    Honestly, I do not know how someone who could work on the project, could not know what they were working on? It as if the "little parts" of the LHC project only cater to the worker Bees working just aspects of the project and their specializations.

    Whilst now, you go way up and overlook this project. To see the whole context measured within that "one tiny big bang moment." Trust me when I say, we shall not minimize the effect of calling the collision process as "one tiny moment," for you may never see the whole context of this project being developed for this "one thing."

    I did not realize the shortcomings that scientists place on themselves when they do specialize. I just assumed they would know as much as I did and see the whole project? I do not say this unkindly, just that it is a shock to me that one could work the string theory models and not realize what they are working on. I have heard even Jacques say there is no connection and listening to Peter Woit, I was equally dismayed that he did not realize what the string theory model was actually doing as it found it's correlation in the developing views of how we look at the moments of creation.

    Bigger is better if you’re searching for smaller

    Neutrinos may be in CERN's Future

    The 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

    I think my comment on previous post of looking for the perfect fluid should have been here.

    Also I do not think this changes how we look at string theory as a model probing the perfect fluid, and "the understanding" of developing a mechanism for this "cross over point?"

    Topologically, how would this have been revealed in the string theory landscape??
    See here and know that Clifford again deleted the short little post above. The point is I think for some reason once I mention string theory or evn M theory in relation to what is transpiring in the views of model development he doe not like this and would be support by Jacques as well.

    That would be my job to convince them and anyone else that hold their views that taking our view to the microseconds, there is a definite relation to the timeline whether you agree with this or not. By introducing "the point of the cross over" you in effect have taken the model and presented it as part of the mechanism for this universe and effectively given new meaning to the "string theory landscape."

    You may want it to be "background independent" like Lee wants it to be, but if you view the background as a oscillatory one, then any idea as configured to the mass of any particle, then you have define this particle as a energy relation? So Lee does not like the oscillatory universe?

    See "Finiteness of String Theory and Mandelstam"

    It is contained "within the moment" of the creation of this universe, yet, we do not know what design this particle is to be in context of the microscopic view of geometrical topologically finishes? As the Genus 1 figure and as an expression of this universe? You had to know what was lying in those valleys, and the potentials of expression, and I relay that in the blackhole horizon as a potential hill.

    The time has come for some changes in this blog and I have been thinking about moving on. While a layman, I do not like to be treated like a fool. Maybe not educated fully and with some work to do, but never as a fool.

    Wednesday, February 14, 2007

    Strangelets and Strange Matter

    Of course I will point to some of the "inherent nature" that some scientists encounter as they develop the geometrical basis to "all the concepts could ever mean?" But first, "the journey."

    If not fundamental, though, quark nuggets zipping around the galaxy would still be an amazing addition. And perhaps even more amazing, in the end, than any technically strange - or just generally bizarre - particles burrowing through the ground would be the fact that the planet is no longer just a block of dumb rock in their path. It is an ever better wired planet, monitored and thought about in ever more ingenious ways; it is a datasphere ever more sensitive to its surroundings and its own processes, from flashes in the upper atmosphere to rumblings in the core. We have made it a planet that notices things. We have made it an observant Earth.


    You have to understand that if you are doing the research you want to know what "this avenue/hypothesis is to produce? It's almost as if "you understand" that the geometry exists under the "fundamental explanations of all concepts" as they are being developed. How a "different language" will be "put over top" of what is existing now schematically. We learn "to read" what has transpired from one who has more credentials then I, as I am only a student of the work.

    At the same time how did such thought processes develop outward to experimental validation in the real world? So you must understand, that I too understand this process. Not only from a "conceptual understanding" but from it's associative analysis one as well. It allow me to develop intuitively into what work is now transpiring at Cern.

    Strangelets are small fragments of strange matter. They only exist if the "strange matter hypothesis" is correct, in which case they are the true ground state of matter, and nuclei are actually metastable states with a very long lifetime.


    Odd behavior?



    A person most intense and preoccupied with the endeavours they work, will notice that time passes very quickly around them. It's as if the world bypassed them, as the focus had cost them the appearance or the attention needed to take care of themselves. "Should I care" as I think of them, whether their hair long or that their desk is pile high with paper?

    Careful least you disrupt the train of thought, that while busy, the underlings stand ready to act according to the plans of the teacher.

    I learnt over time to accept that even the academics will make allowances for the "uniqueness of individuals" even if that behaviour seems odd( sure call it detective work :0). To allow these attributes of the mind to go along with, the excellent and Nobel prize work that may be produced. Do you not think that Einstein in his last days was more concerned with the focus of his attentions then how dishevelled his hair was?

    Pierre Auger on Cosmic Rays

    "For in 1938, I showed the presence in primary cosmic rays of particles of a million Gigavolts -- a million times more energetic than accelerators of that day could produce. Even now, when accelerators have far surpassed the Gigavolt mark, they still have not attained the energy of 1020eV, the highest observed energy for cosmic rays. Thus, cosmic rays have not been dethroned as far as energy goes, and the study of cosmic rays has a bright future, if only to learn where these particles come from and how they are accelerated. You know that Fermi made a very interesting proposal that particles are progressively accelerated by bouncing off moving magnetic fields, gaining a little energy each time. In this way, given a certain number of "kicks," one could perhaps account for particles of 1018 -- 1020 electron volts. As yet, however, we have no good theory to explain the production of the very-high-energy particles that make the air showers that my students and I discovered in 1938 at Jean Perrin's laboratory on a ridge of the Jungfrau."

    -- Pierre Auger, Journal de Physique, 43, 12, 1982


    With introduction to the "Pierre Auger experiments" one learns to appreciate what the large Microscope can do. It allowed us to change the way in which we see cosmology working to include the "astrophysics approach to the description of the universe."

    Do you think cosmology devoid of new theoretical approaches, as we venture into the even more abstract "D Brane" world? That we should exclude, such theoretics as a language over top of the process of physics, to not think it is not delving into the world of the geometries involved as well as that physics?

    The microscopic process is much more diverse not only in terms of the language, but of how concepts can "cross over" into what we are doing with other approaches.

    Beam Trajectories



    This summer, CERN gave the starting signal for the long-distance neutrino race to Italy. The CNGS facility (CERN Neutrinos to Gran Sasso), embedded in the laboratory's accelerator complex, produced its first neutrino beam. For the first time, billions of neutrinos were sent through the Earth's crust to the Gran Sasso laboratory, 732 kilometres away in Italy, a journey at almost the speed of light which they completed in less than 2.5 milliseconds. The OPERA experiment at the Gran Sasso laboratory was then commissioned, recording the first neutrino tracks.


    Now of course I opened the beginning of this blog post with a article that asks you to consider the domain in which they have considered earth and it's value as a experimental process. The "strange hypothesis" to which I am talking about as a "cross over analogies" to the developmental process of Cern.

    The Pythagoreans were called mathematikoi, which means "those that study all"


    Amazing isn't it? That if one understood that there was a original context for all that we create, then what shall this context be? So science asks, that the universal language display the mathematics as a basis of all "conceptual frameworks spoken" that are developed. This is, "the right way of it" as I have watched the scientists as they have developed their theories.

    So we have this "microscopic view of reality" as the "power of ten" along with "this enlightenment" that taken over all our senses. What has happened now, as we venture out into the cosmos? What has happened when we've taken "theoretical positions" and adapted them to the processes of physics?

    Sunday, February 11, 2007

    Neutrino Mixing Explained in 60 seconds

    I added this post to demonstrate the connection to what is behind the investigation to "neutrino mixing" that needs further clarification. So I put this blog post together below.

    It "allows the sources" to consider the question of how we see the existing universe. How perspective has been focused toward the reductionist understanding while we ponder the very nature of the universe.



    For example, when neutrinos interact with matter they produce specific kinds of other particles. Catch the neutrino at one moment, and it will interact to produce an electron. A moment later, it might interact to produce a different particle. "Neutrino mixing" describes the original mixture of waves that produces this oscillation effect.


    By my very nature, I have adopted the views of the Pythagoreans in that, what I see of the universe has it's counter part as some feature within our determinations "as the background" to the "nature of all matter." It's effect, from understanding the very basis of "particle creation" has this factor to be included in our determinations of that particle in question.

    So, what views shall we assign to the Higg's Boson Field? The view of the cosmos at large? We needed to see that such events can and do happen within the universe. To see them at a level that had not been considered in terms of the microstate blackhole creation that is created from such particle collisions? One needed to identify where "these points" could exist not only in the collider, but in the cosmos at large. How else could you explain the division you have assigned the make up of the cosmos?



    Usually all physicists see are the remnants of a new particle decaying into other types of particles. From that, they infer the existence of the new species and can determine some of its characteristics.


    So we move from the limitations of the standard model?

    This is a fixture of what has been accomplished, yet, how could we see things as so different to include gravity as a feature and new force carrier? If we are to consider the energy of all these matters, then how else could you have included gravity?



    To slow them down, theorists proposed a mysterious, universe-filling, not-yet-seen "liquid" called the Higgs field. Also, physicists now understand that 96 percent of the universe is not made of matter as we know it, and thus it does not fit into the Standard Model. How to extend the Standard Model to account for these mysteries is an open question to be answered by current and future experiments.


    While it is some what mysterious, the applications as ancient as they may seem, they are not apart from our constitutions as we have applied our understanding of the universe it seems:)

    Saturday, January 20, 2007

    Radiactive Decay

    Unit Circle


    Complex numbers can be identified with points in the Euclidean plane, namely the number a + bi is identified with the point (a, b). Under this identification, the unit circle is a group under multiplication, called the circle group. This group has important applications in mathematics and science. See here.

    Just briefly showing containment of "collision process" and for later study. This is how I see this "relation of cosmic particle collisions" to incidents in "high energy collisions processes" and I wonder if this is wrong? Also pointing toward "Neutrino oscillation" as a probabilistic consequence of Quantum mechanics.

    To the Substance of this Post

    Q9 raised an issue that is of some significance to me because of the way I was "geometrically seeing these collision processes." While, I had not moved my thinking to the human factor in this process, it has in my study raised the question of what effect it has on the human populations on a personal note.

    Quasar9:
    The general effects of radon to the human body are due to its radioactivity and consequent risk of radiation-induced cancer. As an inert gas, "radon has a low solubility in body fluids which lead to a uniform distribution of the gas throughout the body" (Lindgren, 1989). Radon gas and its solid decay products are carcinogens. Some of the daughter products, especially polonium-218 and 214, from radioactive decay of radon present a radiologic hazard. Depending on the size of the particles, radon decay products can be inhaled into the lung where they undergo further radioactive decay releasing small bursts of energy in the form of alpha particles that can either cause double strand DNA breaks or create free radicals that can also damage the DNA. Also See: Radon





    The ABCs - and Xs and Zs - of Radiation

    Alpha and beta rays are particles. Gamma rays are electromagnetic radiation, like X-rays but at higher energies. Health physicists worry most about HZE cosmic rays, those with high mass (Z stands for atomic number, which also implies mass) and energy (E). They have two principal sources, the Sun and the galaxy.


    Quasar9:
    The energy of alpha particles varies, with higher energy alpha particles being emitted from larger nuclei, but most alpha particles have energies of between 3 and 7 MeV. This is a substantial amount of energy for a single particle, but their high mass means alpha particles have a lower speed (with a typical kinetic energy of 5 MeV the speed is 15,000 km/s) than any other common type of radiation (β particles, γ-rays, neutrons etc). Because of their charge and large mass, alpha particles are easily absorbed by materials and can travel only a few centimetres in air. They can be absorbed by tissue paper or the outer layers of human skin (about 40 micrometres, equivalent to a few cells deep) and so are not generally dangerous to life unless the source is ingested or inhaled. Because of this high mass and strong absorption, however, if alpha radiation does enter the body (most often because radioactive material has been inhaled or ingested), it is the most destructive form of ionizing radiation. It is the most strongly ionizing, and with large enough doses can cause any or all of the symptoms of radiation poisoning. It is estimated that chromosome damage from alpha particles is about 100 times greater than that caused by an equivalent amount of other radiation. The alpha emitter polonium-210 is suspected of playing a role in lung and bladder cancer related to tobacco smoking. Also See:Alpha Particles



    Low energy alpha particles may be completely stopped by a sheet of paper, beta particles by aluminum shielding. Gamma rays, being very high energy in nature, can only be reduced by much more substantial obstacles, such as a very thick piece of lead.

    As for types of radioactive radiation, it was found that an electric or magnetic field could split such emissions into three types of beams. For lack of better terms, the rays were given the alphabetic names alpha, beta, and gamma, names they still hold today. It was immediately obvious from the direction of electromagnetic forces that alpha rays carried a positive charge, beta rays carried a negative charge, and gamma rays were neutral. From the magnitude of deflection, it was also clear that alpha particles were much more massive than beta particles. Passing alpha rays through a thin glass membrane and trapping them in a discharge tube allowed researchers to study the emission spectrum of the resulting gas, and ultimately prove that alpha particles are in fact helium nuclei. Other experiments showed the similarity between beta radiation and cathode rays; they are both streams of electrons, and between gamma radiation and X-rays, which are both high energy electromagnetic radiation.

    Although alpha, beta, and gamma are most common, other types of decay were eventually discovered. Shortly after discovery of the neutron in 1932, it was discovered by Enrico Fermi that certain rare decay reactions give rise to neutrons as a decay particle. Isolated proton emission was also eventually observed in some elements. Shortly after the discovery of the positron in cosmic ray products, it was realized that the same process that operates in classical beta decay can also produce positrons (positron emission), analogously to negative electrons. Each of the two types of beta decay acts to move a nucleus toward a ratio of neutrons and protons which has the least energy for the combination. Finally, in a phenomenon called cluster decay, specific combinations of neutrons and protons other than alpha particles were found to occasionally spontaneously be emitted from atoms.

    Thursday, January 18, 2007

    Collider Detector at Fermilab and Slac

    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.


    If for one moment you thought strings had some relation to the very nature as "building blocks of this universe," at what "energies" would we have said they had made their appearance? Microseconds perhaps after the universe came into expression?

    The CDF Detector. Image from Fermilab

    Three trillion times per second--that's how fast quarks in the B sub s (Bs) particle "oscillate," or switch between their matter and antimatter states, according to scientists from the Collider Detector at Fermilab collaboration. The CDF physicists measured this rapid oscillation with the help of the world's most powerful particle accelerator, Fermilab’s Tevatron, unprecedented computing power made available through the Open Science Grid and the LHC Computing Grid, and a healthy dose of ingenuity.

    "Bs oscillation is a very subtle and rapid effect," says Jacobo Konigsberg from the University of Florida, co-spokesperson for the CDF collaboration. "It's astonishing that we can measure it at all."


    When you look at these events, the cascading effect of this interaction with the earth's upper atmosphere, why did not one think of the constituent properties that would be exhibited at the beginning of that same universe?

    Multi-Jet Hadronic Events


    Event 12637_6353_600_z_3jet

    In some hadronic events, the initial high-energy quark and or antiquark pair may radiate a high-energy gluon before the production of additional quarks and antiquarks in the strong force field is completed. These gluons also show up in the event picture, because they provide a different pattern. The momentum of each high-energy gluon appears as an additional jet of hadrons. This process results in three, four, or even five jet events. Sometimes though, as these pictures show, it is very clear to see.


    I do not understand why people did not understand this relation to what was happening within the cosmos, would not be produced in our colliders? That what was happening at the beginning of our universe had some relation to what was being produced in those colliders?

    Cosmic Rays


    Cosmic rays are caused by protons from outer space. When a proton (shown in yellow) hits the air in the earth's upper atmosphere it produces many particles. Most of these decay or are absorbed in the atmosphere. One type of particle, called muons (shown in red), lives long enough that some reach the earth's surface.

    SLAC's Cosmic Ray Detector: The Cosmic Ray Detector consists of three pairs of scintillator panels for muon detection. Sets A, B, and C (see below) are oriented with the flat surface of the panels horizontally, at 45°, and vertically, respectively. In each pair, the panels measure 4.875 inches (12.4 cm) wide by 8 inches (20.3 cm) long, and the distance between them is 18.5 inches (47.0 cm). The panels are shielded from light with aluminum foil, black plastic sheets, and black tape. When muons penetrate through these panels, chemicals within will scintillate (emit flashes of light).