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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See also:Neutrino Mixing Explained in 60 seconds

Sounding off on Economic Constraints in Experimentation

I mean most understand that the economic spending "is the choice" as to whether an area of research will be continued to be funded or not, according to the direction that research council choose. Limited resources according to the times? This is not a reflection of the absurdity of going in a certain direction, but one of where the money is to allocated from a scientific endeavor and standpoint.

Finally, tantalisingly, the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (CDMS) released the results of its latest (and final) effort to search for the Dark Matter that seems to make up most of the matter in the Universe, but doesn’t seem to be the same stuff as the normal atoms that we’re made of. Under some theories, the dark matter would interact weakly with normal matter, and in such a way that it could possibly be distinguished from all the possible sources of background. These experiments are therefore done deep underground — to shield from cosmic rays which stream through us all the time — and with the cleanest and purest possible materials — to avoid contamination with both both naturally-occurring radioactivity and the man-made kind which has plagued us since the late 1940s.See:Doctors, Deep Fields and Dark Matter (Bold added for emphasis by me)

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ZEPLIN-III-Project

Observational studies of the rotation of galaxies and groups of galaxies strongly suggest the existence of a dominating amount of matter invisible at any electromagnetic wavelengths. One of the favoured forms of this "missing mass", both theoretically and observationally, is the WIMP (Weakly Interacting Massive Particle). These cold WIMPs are expected to be scattered by the nuclei of typical detector material at a rate of less than one per kg per day, yielding energy depositions in the 1-50 keV energy range.

ZEPLIN-III is a two-phase (liquid/gas) xenon detector looking for galactic WIMP dark matter at the Boulby Underground Laboratory, North Yorkshire, UK, at a depth of 1100 m. At this depth the cosmic-ray background is reduced by a factor of a million. The WIMP target consists of 12 kg of cold liquid xenon topped by a thin layer of xenon gas. These are viewed by an array of 31 photomultiplier tubes immersed in the liquid.

The detector operates at higher electric fields than other, similar systems, namely its predecessor ZEPLIN-II, and provides high-precision reconstruction of the interaction point in three dimensions. Together with the low-background construction (mainly high-purity copper), these features will give ZEPLIN-III higher sensitivity in direct WIMP searches.

The ZEPLIN-III Collaboration includes the University of Edinburgh, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Imperial College London, LIP-Coimbra (Portugal) and ITEP-Moscow (Russia).

ZEPLIN-III PICTURE GALLERY

Photomultiplier array covered by electrode grid 

Cosmologically: Looking from the Inside Out

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

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..."

It is one of those times that I shall try to explain myself as best I can in my views  in regard to the Universe.

You must know that through reformations that can change perspective,  is about our exchange with reality, and the way we interact with our environment. The experiment and the conclusion. A Inductive /Deductive approach to how we are trying to arrive at the truth.

So there is this continual dialogue with nature that defines each moment and over the long run, we can place ourselves in what ever confines we like "according to the limits of that truth"  how ever long we like to remain there.

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: Man Looking into Outer Space

Now of course, we see information as an entropic realization of how we relate to the universe, so this arrow of time issue becomes an important factor about what reveals the "Gossamer of a thread of thought" that was well established. I was just short of a certain amount of time as to thoughts forming while I tried to close in from my own perspective.

Scientists zero in on why time flows in one direction 

The question about the arrow of time has vexed physicists for a century because “for the most part the fundamental laws of physics don’t distinguish between past and future. They’re time-symmetric,” Carroll said.

And closely bound to the issue of time is the concept of entropy, a measure of disorder in the universe. As physicist Ludwig Boltzmann showed a century ago, entropy naturally increases with time. “You can turn an egg into an omelet, but not an omelet into an egg,” Carroll said.

So this is the starting point of what is espoused by the likes of Sean Carroll was a continued question in forming an opinion scientifically based that correlated in my own mind with the work of particulate research in particle physics.

I’m not going to bother. The dark matter hypothesis provides a simple and elegant fit to the Bullet Cluster, and for that matter fits a huge variety of other data. That doesn’t mean that it’s been proven within metaphysical certainty; but it does mean that there is a tremendous presumption that it is on the right track. The Bullet Cluster (and for that matter the microwave background) behave just as they should if there is dark matter, and not at all as you would expect if gravity were modified. Any theory of modified gravity must have the feature that essentially all of its predictions are exactly what dark matter would predict. So if you want to convince anyone to read your long and complicated paper arguing in favor of modified gravity, you have a barrier to overcome. These folks aren’t crackpots, but they still face the challenge laid out in the alternative science respectability checklist: “Understand, and make a good-faith effort to confront, the fundamental objections to your claims within established science.” Tell me right up front exactly how your theory explains how a force can point somewhere other than in the direction of its source, and why your theory miraculously reproduces all of the predictions of the dark matter idea (which is, at heart, extraordinarily simple: there is some collisionless non-relativistic particle with a certain density).See:Dark Matter: Still Existing

So again to me,  according to this arrow of time. While maintaining a global view we have about our universe. So it is clear again, the limitations of perspective has to do with physics information entropically displayed as to how the universe as a whole is describing itself for us, as we try to understand the LHC experiments. Natural events that are highlighted by experimentation.

It also requires us to understand that even while we are entropic in the state of the universe, there are local regions within the universe that contribute to the whole. This is in contradiction to an entropic realization of the universe as a arrow of time but in this view you have to consider that these events are part of the universe that can contribute too, while examining the status of the universe.

I hope there is enough here for now to form an understanding of the perspective that reveals what and how the universe came to be, and stands today according too, the science that CWAP maps for us and reveals my thinking involved.

Will write more later.

What the "i" represents, is Natural?

A Conformal Diagram of a Minkowski Spacetime
John D. Norton

First, here is the conformal diagram of a Minkowski spacetime. This is the complete spacetime. It includes all of the infinity of space and the infinity of time through which things persist.

This diagram gives the simplest case in which we consider just one dimension of space.

Note the three types of infinities: timelike, lightlike and spacelike. They correspond to the different vanishing points in an ordinary perspective drawing.

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The Quantum Theory of the Electron



Paul Dirac

Projective Geometry

When one is doing mathematical work, there are essentially two different ways of thinking about the subject: the algebraic way, and the geometric way. With the algebraic way, one is all the time writing down equations and following rules of deduction, and interpreting these equations to get more equations. With the geometric way, one is thinking in terms of pictures; pictures which one imagines in space in some way, and one just tries to get a feeling for the relationships between the quantities occurring in those pictures. Now, a good mathematician has to be a master of both ways of those ways of thinking, but even so, he will have a preference for one or the other; I don't think he can avoid it. In my own case, my own preference is especially for the geometrical way.

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In mathematical physics, the gamma matrices, {γ⁰,γ¹,γ²,γ³}, also known as the Dirac matrices, are a set of conventional matrices with specific anticommutation relations that ensure they generate a matrix representation of the Clifford algebra Cℓ(1,3). It is also possible to define higher-dimensional Gamma matrices. When interpreted as the matrices of the action of a set of orthogonal basis vectors for contravariant vectors in Minkowski space, the column vectors on which the matrices act become a space of spinors, on which the Clifford algebra of space time acts. This in turn makes it possible to represent infinitesimal spatial rotations and Lorentz boosts. Spinors facilitate space-time computations in general, and in particular are fundamental to the Dirac equation for relativistic spin-½ particles.

In Dirac representation, the four contravariant gamma matrices are

Analogue sets of gamma matrices can be defined in any dimension and signature of the metric. For example the Pauli matrices are a set of "gamma" matrices in dimension 3 with metric of Euclidean signature (3,0).

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www.mcescher.com

Can we hope to use antimatter as a source of energy? Do you feel antimatter could power vehicles in the future, or would it just be used for major power sources?

There is no possibility to use antimatter as energy "source". Unlike solar energy, coal or oil, antimatter does not occur in nature: we have to make every particle at the expense of much more energy than it can give back during annihilation.

You might imagine antimatter as a possible temporary storage medium for energy, much like you store electricity in rechargeable batteries. The process of charging the battery is reversible with relatively small loss. Still, it takes more energy to charge the battery than what you get back out of it. For antimatter the loss factors are so enormous that it will never be practical.

If we could assemble all the antimatter we've ever made at CERN and annihilate it with matter, we would have enough energy to light a single electric light bulb for a few minutes.

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Thoughts on Angel and Demons Plot

``For me, the most attractive way ... would be to capture the antihydrogen in a neutral particle trap ... The objective would be to then study the properties of a small number of [antihydrogen] atoms confined in the neutral trap for a long time."Gerald Gabrielse, 1986 Erice Lecture (shortly after first trapping of antiprotons)
"Penning Traps, Masses and Antiprotons", in Fundamental Symmetries,
edited by P. Bloch, P. Paulopoulos and R. Klapisch, p. 59 (Plenum, New York, 1987). See:Goals for ATRAP

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Physics at this high energy scale describes the universe as it existed during the first moments of the Big Bang. These high energy scales are completely beyond the range which can be created in the particle accelerators we currently have (or will have in the foreseeable future.) Most of the physical theories that we use to understand the universe that we live in also break down at the Planck scale. However, string theory shows unique promise in being able to describe the physics of the Planck scale and the Big Bang.

So what about the Missing Energy?

"Death, so called, is but older matter dressed
In some new form. And in a varied vest,
From tenement to tenement though tossed,
The soul is still the same, the figure only lost." Poem on Pythagoras, Dryden's Ovid.

It is unfortunate to have endured the constant flutter of disbelief(cry of pseudoscience) as to what is possible in a given space, that we can say that we do not really have all the facts to it's understanding, yet, to know that in this region, new physics will be produced.

It is also unfortunate to have observed a whole generation of string theorists who have undergone this constant rebuttal and berating over and over again while standing strong to the "educative values" undermined by those who saw no benefit too. You maintained the perseverance of a "thought domain that cover regions within the valleys" to be speaking about a time just after the big bang. How would the normal population of scientists know this?

Thanks to the high collision energy and luminosity of the LHC, the ATLAS detector will be capable of revealing the existence of extra spatial dimensions in some substantial region of parameter space. The talk will summarize recent studies from the collaboration on different possible signals predicted by models where the dimensions are "large", where they are of size ~TeV^-1 or where they are "warped". These signals include direct emission of Kaluza-Klein states of gravitons, virtual effects of graviton exchange and gauge boson excitations. We shall also discuss the possibilities of observing black holes. mini review for search of eXTRA Dimentions

Now this question is an important one to me, because it is based on the amount of energy used in the collision process, and what is to come out of that collision process as tracks, adds up to so much energy. If these two numbers do not equal in parity then where has that extra energy gone?

This has always been a fundamental question to me of where I thought "new physics was to be found" and to have Tammaso Dorigo confirm this is quite a statement indeed of what is leading perspective in terms of what is to be measured and what is going to be measured in the proposed LHC experiments.

Missing Energy Kicks New Physics Models Off The Board

The signature of large missing energy and jets is arguably one of the most important avenues for the study of potential new physics signatures at today's hadron colliders.

The above concept marks an interesting turn of events: the years of the glorification of charged leptons as the single most important tools for the discovery of rare production processes appears behind us. The W and Z discovery in 1983 by UA1 at CERN, or the top quark discovery by CDF and DZERO in 1995 at Fermilab, would have been impossible without the precise and clean detection of electrons and muons. However, with time we have understood that missing energy may be a more powerful tool for new discoveries.

Missing energy arises when a violent collision between the projectiles -protons against antiprotons at the Tevatron collider, or protons against protons at the world's most powerful accelerator, the LHC- produces an asymmetric flow of energetic bodies out of the collision point in the plane orthogonal to the beams: a transverse imbalance. This is a clear signal that something is leaving the detector unseen. And it turns out that there is a host of new physics signals which can do precisely that.

A large amount of missing transverse energy may be the result of the decay of a leptoquarks into jets and neutrinos, when the latter leave undetected; or from the silent escape of a supersymmetric neutral particle -the neutralino- produced in the chain of decays following the production of squarks and gluinos; or it may even be due to the escape of particles in a fourth dimension of space -an alternative dubbed "large extra dimensions". see more in linked title above)

Now this is the thing that has troubled me most about scientists who are working and in the know, had not realized the necessity of pushing perspective back to a time to the first moments of the big bang(not just Steven Weinberg's first three minutes but of the microseconds just after the big bang) in order to understand what we are working on in terms of unification, and of where the products of this missing energy will spring forth from, as we move forward in the experiments to come.

The understanding then has always been in what is in that missing energy, to determine what new physics shall be, that such understanding was already there for the string theorist in their considerations. The contact point has already been defined for them, and reached two extremes. There is a reason why the missing energy escapes.

You had to know already where and what this "contact point meant" and what was to come out of it to know that dynamical qualities could exist in the big bang and where this big bang resides in the cosmos. That such energies can be reached there now. This required us to know that local events in the cosmos could contribute to the very nature of the cosmos and the state of the cosmos in the now. Like some cosmological constant "hidden and growing" in Omega.

To know that the dissipative results from micro collisions decaying fast too, did not mean we would be running short of the elements of this new physics either. It left it's remnants all around us to know that what can come out of such a collision point is not the story of the FLashForward scenario, but of things that travel through the earth to meet Gran Sasso and the likes. It was a whole plethora of particle disseminations that left missing energy around for us to explore in potential as some fictional substrate of the reality of nature that had not been seen before.

The State of Fear

It is one of those things I guess,  as you get older you completely forget part of one's thinking process that was started,  and never really went anywhere. Until that is, it is "awakened again" for introspection.

So if you find similarities to other bloggers and the title of this blog to theirs it is because four years ago I had started the thought process below in regards to climate change. I had created this blog called, "The State of Fear" in concert with reading the book, The State of Fear by Michael Crichton.

                                                                                                                       Adult mountain pine beetle,

                                                                                                                       Dendroctonus ponderosae

Some quotes from it were correlations in my mind about points made in context of the fiction that were relevant to me about where I lived and what was happening to the forests around me.

"I'm glad you do," Bradley said, gesturing for the kids to put their hands down. The only person talking today would be Ted Bradley. "But you may not know that global warming is going to cause a very sudden shift in our climate. Maybe just a few months or years, and it will suddenly be much hotter or much colder. And there will be hordes of insects and diseases that will take down wonderful trees."
"What kind of insects?" one kid asked.
"Bad ones," Bradley said. "The ones that eat trees, that worm inside them and chew them up." He wiggled his hands, suggesting the worming in progress.
"It would take a insect a long time to eat a whole tree," a girl offered.
"No it wouldn't!" Bradley said. "That's the trouble. Because warming means lots and lots of insects will come-a plague of insects-and they'll eat the trees fast!"

Page 402 of, The State of Fear by Michael Crichton

See also: You Kids Know What Global Warming Is?

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Ecology of Thought

Now we have stocked in our wood shed the effects of this devastation that has run through our forests. I again have to interject not only with a scientific understanding but of one that emotively draws my attention to the "source of income" that has provided for the growth of my family, and the trees that support me today.

“I do not think anything, young man. I know. That is the purpose of my research - to know things, not to surmise them. Not to theorize. Not to hypothesize. But to know from direct research in the field. It’s a lost art in academia these days, young man-you are not that young- what is your name anyway?”
“Peter Evans.”
“And you work for Drake Mr. Evan?”
“No, for George Morton.”
“Well, why didn’t you say so!” Hoffman said. “George Morton was a great, great man. Come along Mr. Evans, and I will buy you some coffee and we can talk. Do you know what I do?”
“ I’m afraid I don’t, sir.”
“I study the ecology of thought,” Hoffman said. “and how it has led to a State of Fear.”

Michael Crichton, State of Fear, page 450

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Now I have not spoken of what comes to past, as it may seem that prophecy has a way about it hidden in the fiction. To have been given the understanding that "prior knowledge" provides the thinking palate for what can come tomorrow in science, does not explain how is it that I could dream of this happening one day too, to see what I had envision long before. My wanting to save the forest perhaps.

Imagine a Genus 1 figured Tree , and it would not have been to unlikely that such vibrating could have amounted to "a signature" for the beetle to have it's dislikes( also patterned) motivating them to leave? But I think this now in retrospect of what was happening at the time in my dream and wonder about what evolves in terms of what came into expression(false vacuum to true) houses a description of the beetle somewhere in the valley of a vast theoretic expression.

So, I had a solution for this devastation that does not fit with the normal thinking, so I'll leave this alone too, because it would not be a satisfactory explanation to what the scientific process would be called as credible. You see I cared about what we were taking from the forest and I thought to explore avenues to provide for better growing seedlings, that replanting could immediately produce superior seedlings, hence a faster regrowth in areas to be replanted.

No one I think is better then nature to say what shall be and what shall not, but looking into the environment of what grows where and what soils are like, I couldn't help but think of what I could do to help give back to what we took out of the forests.

So how could I help Silviculture? By designing a better and stronger tree? No, again the perfect remedy is in what nature has provided.

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In nature it is the cold, that has to be colder then, for an extended period in order to cut through the bark these bugs inject Blue Stain Fungi into the outer ring of the wood.  So nature by process of the beetle has left it's mark in what is called a "blue wood."

Natures past practise was to burn,  and in the forest, what quickly burns also returns to the previous states that existed long before we came along. This is the way of it as it had been in the past,  but today, we are very watchful of our forests and what can wipe out towns and cities very quickly if we left this unchecked.

So I have to apologize for my forgetfulness as to what was started before.

Do You Think This Cloud Experiment is Important?

"The aim of CLOUD is to understand whether or not cosmic rays can affect clouds and climate, by studying the microphysical interactions of cosmic rays with aerosols, cloud droplets and ice particles." This is one of the possible mechanisms for solar-climate variability since the solar wind – the stream of charged particles ejected from the sun – varies over time and affects the intensity of the cosmic rays that reach the Earth.See: On Cloud Nine

I have always refrained from speaking on the climate change topic mostly because I really did not know enough. I was uncertain as to whether we really had all the facts about what was taking place. This in no way was to limit the perspective on how we can make our world a better place, or create a better environ.

I just wanted these facts included in the assessment in terms of what scientists are actually doing now.  This then opens the mind up to whether the process here is valid one to take into consideration along with how we view climate change.

The Cloud Chamber in the Museum of Cavendish

Historically the validation of the process, it is necessary to converge on some notation about it's beginnings to know that it can evolve to what it is today. This is a necessary part of moving forward in experimental validation processes toward foundational thinking and our actions in the future. Our Actions now.

CLOUD – Cosmics Leaving OUtdoor Droplets

CLOUD is an experiment that uses a cloud chamber to study the possible link between galactic cosmic rays and cloud formation. Based at the Proton Synchrotron at CERN, this is the first time a high-energy physics accelerator has been used to study atmospheric and climate science; the results could greatly modify our understanding of clouds and climate.
Cosmic rays are charged particles that bombard the Earth's atmosphere from outer space. Studies suggest they may have an influence on the amount of cloud cover through the formation of new aerosols (tiny particles suspended in the air that seed cloud droplets). This is supported by satellite measurements, which show a possible correlation between cosmic-ray intensity and the amount of low cloud cover. Clouds exert a strong influence on the Earth’s energy balance; changes of only a few per cent have an important effect on the climate. Understanding the underlying microphysics in controlled laboratory conditions is a key to unravelling the connection between cosmic rays and clouds.

The CLOUD experiment involves an interdisciplinary team of scientists from 18 institutes in 9 countries, comprised of atmospheric physicists, solar physicists, and cosmic-ray and particle physicists. The PS provides an artificial source of ‘cosmic rays’ that simulates natural conditions as closely as possible. A beam of particles is sent into a reaction chamber and its effects on aerosol production are recorded and analysed.

The initial stage of the experiment uses a prototype detector, but the full CLOUD experiment will include an advanced cloud chamber and a reactor chamber, equipped with a wide range of external instrumentation to monitor and analyse their contents. The temperature and pressure conditions anywhere in the atmosphere can be re-created within the chambers, and all experimental conditions can be controlled and measured, including the ‘cosmic ray’ intensity and the contents of the chambers.See:CLOUD–Cosmics Leaving OUtdoor Droplets

Again I am remaining open to all points of view that are scientifically based and point toward a better understanding of our relationship with the effects of what we are doing to our planet.

Taking Cosmic Rays for a spin

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

Sounding Off on the Dark Matter Issue

Fermilab

If dark matter can pull gravitationally, it has mass

So here is an article of 2006 with some interesting information. Now these experimental procedures are always interesting to me because of the type of detectors that were dreamt up in which to measure some aspect of the reality supposed, and realized, by noise in the background.

For scientists to "hear" a dark matter particle, it must hit an atom in one of the crystals at the heart of the CDMS detectors. The crystals are kept cold—close to absolute zero—to reduce atomic movement, keeping the crystals quiet. The detectors "listen" for vibrations inside the crystal, like ears listening for vibrations in the air.

The detectors contain two kinds of crystals, germanium and silicon. A germanium atom is larger than a silicon one: Its nucleus has 73 protons and neutrons compared to silicon's 28. This size difference helps CDMS sort out yet another source of background—neutrons. High-energy cosmic rays and radioactive decays in the matter surrounding the detectors can produce neutrons. Hitting atoms in the crystals, these neutrons cause a "sound" in the detectors similar to the one made by the predicted dark matter particles.See: Listening for whispers of dark matter

Model of the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search which translates actual data into sound and light. We have not yet had a dark matter interaction, but we have lots of particles hitting the detectors and that is what you are watching. A downloadable version is at my webpage http://www.hep.umn.edu/~prisca More info on our experiment can be found at http://cdms.berkeley.edu and http://www.soudan.umn.edu

So lets mover forward here to Dec 10, while waiting to hear on Dec 17 for more news.

The CDMS collaboration has completed the analysis of the final CDMS-II runs, which more than doubled the total data from all previous runs combined. The collaboration is working hard to complete the first scientific publication about these new results and plans to submit the manuscript to arXiv.org before the two primary CDMS talks scheduled for Thursday, Dec. 17, at Fermilab and at SLAC. See:The search for dark matter:has CDMS found something?

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

Dark Matter Detected, or Not? Live Blogging the Seminar

by JoAnne

What Began all Else Follows

ISAACSON: The virtue of tolerance, which I think is the most important virtue we need in the 21st century. When Thomas Jefferson wrote the first draft of the Declaration, he had a great line, "We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable." And Franklin crossed out "sacred and undeniable" and put, "We hold these truths to be self evident." [Franklin] said we need to be a very tolerant nation in which our rights are based on reason, not based on religion, and I think in this century, we have to be tolerant of all religions and all tribes, and that was the thing that Benjamin Franklin taught us.Isaacson on Benjamin Franklin book

Benjamin looked to the native population of the early Americas, and in the spirit of good science asked that this constitution remove religious dogma from it's inception. Native, and immigrant treated the same principled without due cosideration?

It is the belief then for me that inside we are all not so different.

The questions about democracy's seem to be precluded these days by the injustice that one might feel is taking place at the time. It orientates the mind to ask what use these democracies if they cannot protect the rights granted under these constitutions. Some might think that loosing sight of the message of what constitutes that democracy is to loose sight of it in the skirmishes all around it, in gay issues or gender inequalities. Racism.

I never did see these things as productive to the understanding of equalities( not that they did not exist or were necessary issues to try and understand),  that we administer with regard to respect and right to expression, but more the understanding that all three could be understood if we went further into our own makeup to understand that this effort is to find "a beginning within us" that is much purer and designed prior too, the time we may take to spend our lives here in this environ.

I have really tried to look past all this to get to the "heart of the matter."  Not to be drawn into those skirmishes( does not mean I do not care). It was better for me to understand what it is that applies to all people regardless of these differences of opinion about and what is felt as inhibiting the right of expression.

I mean being apart from the American dream and living in Canada, these principles did not escape myself as I look to my own founding fathers and the start of countries that became democratically based in principal.

Top 10 Most Interesting 4th of July Facts

9. Benjamin Franklin and John Adams were given an offer to write the Declaration of Independence but refused.

Franklin and Adams’ reason for turning the offer down was because they believed that Americans would be prejudiced if they learned that they were the ones who wrote it. But that did not stop Franklin from putting in a good number of corrections before the declaration’s final draft was done. One of these was inserting the line “and the pursuit of happiness” to substitute for the version Thomas Jefferson wrote that only had “property” on it.

So this became more the effort to understand the historical to try and bring perspective to what all peoples have in common, that we do not see these differences "in the inequalities" but to grant the patience and foresight to see all humanity regardless of these things. (Not to practise escapism)

So there has to be something said about what and how you feel inside to administer perspective and time fought in those skirmishes, to see that one can be affected and feel that they are labelled and are fitting a certain profile according to the idea of what those skirmishes mean.

The Power of Myth, by Joseph Campbell
With Bill Moyers,

Myth and the Modern World, Pg 31,

"Campbell:Yes. This is the first Nation in the world that was ever established on the basis of reason instead of simply warfare. These were eighteen-century deists, these genetlemen. Over here we read, In God We Trust." But that is not the God of the Bible. These men did not believe in a Fall. They did not think the mind of man was cut off from God. The mind of man, cleansed of secondary and merely temporal concerns, beholds with radiance of a cleansed mirror a reflection of the rational mind of God. Reason puts you in touch with God. Consequently, for these men, there is no special revelation anywhere, and none is needed, because the mind of man cleared of its fallibilities is sufficiently capable of the knowledge of God. All people in the world are capable of reason. All men are capable of reason. That is the fundamental principle of democracy. Because everybody's mind is capable of true knowledge, you don't have to have special authority, or a special revelation telling you that this is the way things should be.

So yes I do not waste time being "in the conflict" but ponder more the facets of the equilibrates to see that the measure of politeness and respect, lies not only in the act of writing those constitutions, that by recognition then,  any business person inclined,  will recognize the company adventure,  to also know,  that the other side of this writing can be for non profit.

People who gather to form  based on the adoptions in principle will speak to goals,structure and etiquette of the organization.