An ancient subatomic signature extends across the universe. It seems that some subatomic particles, invisible and untouchable effects of the very creation of reality, might exist simultaneously across all of space. We're honestly surprised people who say science is boring don't spontaneously combust from the foolishness of their statements.

"Relic" neutrinos, like the relic photons that make up the cosmic microwave background, are leftovers from the hot, dense early universe that prevailed 13.7 billion years ago. But over the lifetime of the cosmos, these relic neutrinos have been stretched out by the expansion of the universe, enlarging the range in which each neutrino can exist.

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"We're talking maybe up to roughly ten billion light-years" for each neutrino, said study co-author George Fuller of the University of California, San Diego. "That's nearly on the order of the size of the observable universe." These oldest of the subatomic particles might each encompass a space larger than thousands of galaxies, new simulations suggest.

While trying to calculate masses for neutrinos, Fuller and his student Chad Kishimoto found that, as the universe has expanded, the fabric of space-time has been tugging at ancient neutrinos, stretching the particles' ranges over vast distances.

Such large ranges can remain intact, the scientists suggest in the May 22 issue of Physical Review Letters, since neutrinos pass right through most of the universe's matter. The big question is whether gravity—say, the pull from an entire galaxy—can force a meganeutrino to collapse down to a single location.

"Quantum mechanics was intended to describe the universe on the smallest of scales, and now here we're talking about how it works on the largest scales in the universe," Kishimoto said. "We're talking about physics that hasn't been explored before."

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Originally posted by Moodle
reply to post by warrenb

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here come those crazy neutrinos again, you know, the ones we've never found. not a single solitary one.

Antineutrinos were first detected in 1956 near a nuclear reactor. Reines and Cowan used two targets containing a solution of cadmium chloride in water. Two scintillation detectors were placed next to the cadmium targets. Antineutrino with an energy above the threshold of 1.8 MeV caused charged current interactions with the protons in the water, producing positrons and neutrons. The resulting positron annihilations with electrons created photons with an energy of about 0.5 MeV. Pairs of photons in coincidence could be detected by the two scintillation detectors above and below the target. The neutrons were captured by cadmium nuclei resulting in gamma rays of about 8 MeV that were detected a few microseconds after the photons from a positron annihilation event.

This experiment was designed by Cowan and Reines to give a unique signature for antineutrinos, to prove the existence of these particles. It was not the experimental goal to measure the total antineutrino flux. The detected antineutrinos thus all carried an energy greater 1.8 MeV, which is the threshold for the reaction channel used (1.8 MeV is the energy needed to create a positron and a neutron from a proton). Only about 3% of the antineutrinos from a nuclear reactor carry enough energy for the reaction to occur.

The existence of a neutrino mass strongly suggests the existence of a tiny neutrino magnetic moment of the order of 10 − 19 Bohr magneton allowing the possibility that neutrinos may interact electromagnetically as well. Neutrino Properties

Originally posted by ngchunter

Originally posted by Moodle
reply to post by warrenb

---

here come those crazy neutrinos again, you know, the ones we've never found. not a single solitary one.

Antineutrinos were first detected in 1956 near a nuclear reactor. Reines and Cowan used two targets containing a solution of cadmium chloride in water. Two scintillation detectors were placed next to the cadmium targets. Antineutrino with an energy above the threshold of 1.8 MeV caused charged current interactions with the protons in the water, producing positrons and neutrons. The resulting positron annihilations with electrons created photons with an energy of about 0.5 MeV. Pairs of photons in coincidence could be detected by the two scintillation detectors above and below the target. The neutrons were captured by cadmium nuclei resulting in gamma rays of about 8 MeV that were detected a few microseconds after the photons from a positron annihilation event.

This experiment was designed by Cowan and Reines to give a unique signature for antineutrinos, to prove the existence of these particles. It was not the experimental goal to measure the total antineutrino flux. The detected antineutrinos thus all carried an energy greater 1.8 MeV, which is the threshold for the reaction channel used (1.8 MeV is the energy needed to create a positron and a neutron from a proton). Only about 3% of the antineutrinos from a nuclear reactor carry enough energy for the reaction to occur.

en.wikipedia.org...

[edit on 12-6-2009 by ngchunter]