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From LiveScience.com: A Major Physics Experiment Just Detected A Particle That Shouldn't Exist
Physics just can't seem to stop churning out experiments with odd results. Will this one be the ONE that finally upsets the Standard Model?
Scientists have produced the firmest evidence yet of so-called sterile neutrinos, mysterious particles that pass through matter without interacting with it at all.
The first hints these elusive particles turned up decades ago. But after years of dedicated searches, scientists have been unable to find any other evidence for them, with many experiments contradicting those old results. These new results now leave scientists with two robust experiments that seem to demonstrate the existence of sterile neutrinos, even as other experiments continue to suggest sterile neutrinos don't exist at all.
That means there's something strange happening in the universe that is making humanity's most cutting-edge physics experiments contradict one another.
And from https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/06/04/miniboone_sterile_neturinos/ we get:
The MiniBooNE experiment is straightforward: proton collisions (12.84 x 1020 protons, to be precise) emit neutrinos, and the instrument fired muon neutrinos at an oil tank. Some of those oscillated into electron neutrinos, so their interaction with the oil produce flashes that instruments can detect.
The oscillation rate is predictable, so even a few hundred extra electron neutrinos are a result.
Physicist and blogger Sabine Hossenfender explained the significance in this Tweet thread, in which she noted:
"The new data from MiniBooNE confirms that this tension in the data is real. This data can (to my best knowledge) NOT be fitted with the standard framework. It requires either new particles (sterile neutrinos) or some kind of symmetry violation. She added: "Now it's time for theoretical physicists to come up with an explanation"."
The known neutrinos – electron, muon, and tau – all interact via the electroweak force as well as gravity, which makes them identifiable by scintillators.
The hints that a sterile flavour might exist arise because of neutrino oscillations – the little blighters like to flip between different flavours.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 04 2018, @09:05PM (9 children)
I'll go out on a limb and guess they haven't been testing a theoretical prediction about these particles, but instead just looking to reject a null model that nobody really believes then taking rejection (or not) of that to mean this particle exists (or not).
Well, this method is called NHST and it is well known for generating conflicting results.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 04 2018, @09:38PM (1 child)
Also,
Nope, this is the usual thinking p(fluke|data) == p(data|fluke) fallacy (transposing the conditional). Still nobody understands what these numbers mean that they are using to claim a discovery (p-values).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 05 2018, @10:42AM
What exactly is wrong with this post that gets it marked troll? Is this the immature way the physics community is going to deal with people who point out their obvious yet pervasive logical errors?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by HiThere on Tuesday June 05 2018, @03:03AM (4 children)
If that's the same article I saw elsewhere they didn't find a new particle, they found an effect that could be explained if this new particle existed. Not quite the same thing.
OTOH, I don't think there is any prediction as to how more directly detect the "sterile neutrino". Even the ordinary ones are pretty hard to spot. So they found an effect that could be predicted from known values if you assume that a sterile neutrino existed with thus and such characteristics. In a way you could say "history repeats", since that was how the electron neutrino was first "discovered". ... And I consider those scare quotes quite valid and appropriate. It was actually discovered much later and even then things are a bit strange, since they can only be indirectly detected. (Except in really rare events like, if I've got this correct, reverse beta decay.)
OTOH, this does appear to be a crack in the standard model, whatever the actual explanation turns out to be. A sterile neutrino is probably the least surprising possible interpretation.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 05 2018, @10:39AM
The least surprising explanation is that there is something mundane wrong with the null model they are rejecting:
https://www.livescience.com/62721-sterile-neutrino-detected-fermilab.html [livescience.com]
Here is what they have to do:
1) Assume the sterile neutrino with such and such properties*does* explain these results.
2) Derive a *precise* prediction for the results of another experiment from a model that includes the sterile neutrino with those properties
- eg if we do such and such then there should be a particle detected at x +/- y energy levels; but hopefully they can figure out something cheaper.
3) Do that experiment and compare to the prediction. If the prediction is wrong, then forget it.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Tuesday June 05 2018, @01:18PM (2 children)
> If that's the same article I saw elsewhere they didn't find a new particle, they found an
> effect that could be explained if this new particle existed. Not quite the same thing.
Surely that is true of all particles? I mean a table is "an effect that could be explained if protons, neutrons and electrons exist". Electromagnetism is "an effect that could be explained if photons exist", etc.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Tuesday June 05 2018, @05:33PM (1 child)
To an extent that's true, but generally there are multiple effects that are explained by the same particle. When there's only one observed effect, the particle's a lot less certain. This is why it originally took neutrinos so long to be accepted. They weren't really accepted until other effects were found that were explained by the same particle. Multiple lines of evidence are a LOT more convincing than single lines, as they really narrow the plausible explanations down a lot more.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Wednesday June 06 2018, @08:40AM
Good answer!
(Score: 2) by driverless on Tuesday June 05 2018, @08:37AM (1 child)
Nahh, it's just a completely ordinary particle wearing Groucho glasses.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 05 2018, @01:08PM
Or a particle they are seeing reflected in a "funhouse mirror", and by "funhouse mirror" I mean their aggregate souls.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by frojack on Monday June 04 2018, @09:06PM (1 child)
Somehow, science by tweet just seems wrong. Just sayin!
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 5, Touché) by FatPhil on Monday June 04 2018, @09:42PM
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1805.12028.pdf
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 04 2018, @09:15PM (1 child)
The experiments are not contradictory, just complementary.
And the explanation is simple: the curse of the Schrodinger cat, except in this case is not a matter of life-and-death but sterile/fertile.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 05 2018, @12:40AM
So the quantum lab is slowly growing more civilized: the cat doesn't die, merely gets whacked in the nuts.
(Score: 3, Informative) by bob_super on Monday June 04 2018, @09:24PM (1 child)
I actually hope this one doesn't make it to the general news cycle, because journalists trying to explain this correctly to the general public is going to cause a lot of headaches ... to physicists banging their heads on their desk.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Tuesday June 05 2018, @03:40AM
It's not the ones who are trying who are the problem.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Monday June 04 2018, @09:26PM (1 child)
https://www.quantumdiaries.org/2014/07/27/sterile-neutrinos/ [quantumdiaries.org]
Okay, this is some information I can actually halfway understand. Although I don't really see why they call both active neutrinos and sterile neutrinos "neutrinos" in the first place since it sounds like most of their properties are opposites of each other anyway.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday June 04 2018, @09:38PM
Seems like hopeful confirmation bias at the moment, are there really no other explanations for the observations?
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(Score: 5, Funny) by VLM on Monday June 04 2018, @09:29PM (2 children)
First of all they're not sterile neutrinos they're incel neutrinos. They're red-pilled on the standard model question and are just neutrinos going their own way aka NGTOW. About 1in 1E18 lose their virginity in the oil tank and interact with at least one other particle, which is at least well lubricated, the remainder staying online and not interacting.
Secondly here is a nice arxiv link:
https://arxiv.org/abs/1805.12028 [arxiv.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 04 2018, @09:47PM (1 child)
electron-sized penis
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 04 2018, @09:58PM
That's HUGE for a neutrino.
If preserving the scale to your dimension, you'd be a tiny dickhead attached to a penis the size of the solar system.
Careful, my friend, don't, just don't get excited, you'll absolutely drain the blood from your brain and pass out.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by jelizondo on Monday June 04 2018, @09:29PM
I did a quick search and find not one respectable site in the first 40 results... I would guess Phys.org or similar sites would be reporting a finding by now.
As someone else reported, Science by twiter seems kind of weird, so I would take this story with a very large grain of salt.
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by VLM on Monday June 04 2018, @09:39PM (2 children)
Here's my best bad SN automobile analogy, especially bad because its about motorcycles not automobiles, but, eh, close enough for Physics work, right?
Studying motorcycles. Our standard model is the world is made out of 2 wheel motorcycles and 4 wheel cars exactly no exceptions no unicycles or any of that bus or semi-trailer stuff. Not to mention no trains or aeroplanes or zeppelins. Anyway, our experiment is we're crashing motorcycles intentionally and analyzing the parts that land in one small roadside ditch. We can predict amazingly well via extensive computer simulation how many wheels should land in the ditch, and we ran the experiment a truly huge number of times, a number with twenty or more digits, and got a couple hundred too many wheels. Everything else in our experiment went according to prediction, which makes that really mysterious. Some theorize that sometimes motorcycles have more than two wheels, although the theoretical model for a "motorcycle sidecar" has not been developed yet. The existing engineering model we've been using for a long time, very successfully, BTW, does not account for the existence of anything but 2 or 4 wheel vehicles, so a proposed 3 wheel vehicle is looking kinda witchcraft like.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 05 2018, @08:37AM
Regarding the simulations, which are more or less calculations with some randomness introduced into the variables (else they would be just calculations with the same outcome every time, like 1+1=2), this randomness introduces statistical errors. How big should this error be in respect to the used huge numbers in your simulations? Could those extra wheels be explained?
I'm not a physicist.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 05 2018, @02:10PM
Maybe it's just a natural aversion to the Reliant Robin [wikipedia.org].
I think we should call these three wheeled particles beaninos. You can have your sidecarinos. Then we should devise an experiment to determine whether my beanino theory or your sidecarino theory is correct.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 04 2018, @11:31PM (4 children)
When fundamental physics turned into statistics, Einstein complained "god" don't throw dice. Well, apparently, as far as we know, it does, at the particle/quantum level.
What's worse, it requires increasingly enormous amount of resources to experiment/verify theories, and the results are still statistical. It's got so hard that many established academics turned to ridonculous bullshits like "anthropic principle" and "multiverse".
It's a golden age for brilliant young minds to come up with something new, something different. The old guard, the the old geezers ran out of ideas.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Immerman on Tuesday June 05 2018, @12:16AM
Have you heard of pilot wave theory? It was abandoned by its creator early on as the Copenhagen interpretation gained ground, but has been gathering momentum again - and is basically a fully deterministic description of quantum mechanics where particle behavior is described by both a pilot wave which propagates down all possible paths, and a particle which interacts with the wave to be guided down one particular path.
Interesting discussion macro-scale analog demonstration of a lot of QM-like behavior like single-particle diffraction, etc.: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlXdsyctD50 [youtube.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 05 2018, @01:02AM
and the results are still statistical.
This is why the results are still wrong. We use statistics (religion) to obfuscate our ignorance.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 05 2018, @02:15PM (1 child)
I'm not certain I understand your objection to the anthropic principle. It seems fairly straight-forward, in a tautological kind of way. Are there people trying to use the anthropic principle in any other manner than philosophically?
Oh, I also want to throw this out there to irritate the electric universe people. Consciousness is form from low-energy quanta (as opposed to cosmic rays zipping along at a good fraction of c) having mass but not interacting in any other way than gravity and whatever we want to postulate to make the quantum consciousness people happy. There's your dark matter. It's souls. But then for my next trick I'll be suggesting that theosophy has something to it. Monads!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 05 2018, @08:18PM
It is a tautology, and therefore has zero explanation value. And yet, some of these academic physicists, some of them in very influential positions, put it forth as the explanation for the universal constants, the parameters of the universe.
In effect, it says "it is the way it is because it is the way it is." Now, if that's their attitude, I fail to see why we should fund their tenure with taxpayers-funded research grants. They gave up trying to figure out why things are the way they are.
They can join a monastery and contemplate their "philosophy" for all we care, but they deserve zero tax-funded support.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 05 2018, @12:35AM (5 children)
Good! A kink may mean we can travel faster than light, beam to Mars, and power flying cars with anti-gravity.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 05 2018, @07:48AM (4 children)
would you stop it with the time traveling nonsense? if we do develop faster than light travel at some point in the future, do you honestly believe that NOBODY, for the REST OF ETERNITY, will break the tabu against traveling "back" to our time? For every rule that society has invented, there has been at least one person who broke the rule, and this happened in our finite history.
by the way, faster-than-light travel implies the possibility of time travel, hence my rant above.
antigravity would be cool though.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 05 2018, @09:09AM (1 child)
Why would someone in their sane mind travel back to this time if there are other times that are way more interesting?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 05 2018, @12:46PM
that was my point! throughout eternity, there will be plenty of insane people willing to travel to now if only because nobody else thinks it's worth doing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 05 2018, @04:48PM
If multi-verses exist, then the so called time-travel "paradoxes" may simply generate forks.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 05 2018, @07:37PM
obviously if time-travel were possible then all normal watches (also the very very expensive ones that only have enough electrons or spring-power for a day or so)
will become obsolete.
i guess whatever mechanism will enable time travel will also be used to make new "time travel proof" watches and they will most probably NOT rely on bouncing a light-beam between two moving (or not moving) mirrors : ]
also i don't understand the philosophy of always trying to shoehorn every particle in a previous model. let's just leave the model in second order and go about making as many as possible "different" particles. we can order them all later on.
so much time and energy is wasted(?) in ifs-and-buts instead of just saying:"if you put this element here, with this formshape, but some current with this shape into it, it makes a particle-field that will totally freeze your liquid water in record time ..."