back to article THIS is MASSIVE! Less-Masslessness neutrino boffins bag Physics Nobel

The Nobel Prize in Physics 2015 has been awarded to Takaaki Kajita of the University of Tokyo, and Arthur B McDonald of Queen's University in Canada, with a citation "for the discovery of neutrino oscillations, which shows that neutrinos have mass". Neutrinos were classically assumed to be massless by the Standard Model of …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Makes particle physics sound like climate science

    "We couldn't find what we were looking for, so obviously what we found had to be the thing we were looking for, and it had clearly transubstantiated as it came into the lab."

    1. Preston Munchensonton

      Re: Makes particle physics sound like climate science

      Not so much really. Every experiment has assumptions about what the outcome should be (i.e. hypothesis). It's the evidence from the experiment that's important, which in the case of McDonald led to different conclusions than assumed.

      It's also important to note that there isn't any huge government or lobbyist money thrown at particle physics. When the US government creates a Quantum Mechanics Administration, then we should be worried.

      1. Alan Brown Silver badge

        Re: Makes particle physics sound like climate science

        "Every experiment has assumptions about what the outcome should be (i.e. hypothesis)."

        EG: The recent studies funded by groups intend on proving links between vaccines and autism

        " It's the evidence from the experiment that's important,"

        EG: No such links being found. Correlation does not imply causality and all that jazz.

    2. A Non e-mouse Silver badge

      Re: Makes particle physics sound like climate science

      Science generally works by stating something and then trying to disprove it. Disproving a hypothesis is actually a good result.

      Remember: It's hard to "prove" a hypothesis. All proving a hypothesis means, is you haven't found something to disprove it! Disproving a hypothesis means you've rules something out.

      1. Graham Marsden

        @A Non e-mouse - Re: Makes particle physics sound like climate science

        > It's hard to "prove" a hypothesis

        Actually "prove" means "test" in this context, hence "degrees proof" of spirits etc.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Makes particle physics sound like climate science

      Unlike Climate Science, they are prepared to admit they got it wrong.

      1. Alan Brown Silver badge

        Re: Makes particle physics sound like climate science

        The "wrong" part of climate science is that the scientists (not the doom'n'gloomers) are worried they may have understated what may happen.

        It's rather telling that politicians will spend millions on security arrangements for a single conference to discuss climate change, but they won't spend $100ks required for the CPU horsepower required for in-depth data analysis required to analyse which models are correct. It's almost as if they _want_ the uncertainty about how badly we're screwed to persist. (almost all the disagreement is on the "how badly" score, not whether the planet is warming faster than it should be)

    4. TitterYeNot

      Re: Makes particle physics sound like climate science

      "We couldn't find what we were looking for, so obviously what we found had to be the thing we were looking for, and it had clearly transubstantiated as it came into the lab."

      Erm, not quite.

      If this is the experiment I'm thinking of, the count of neutrinos in a certain state hitting detectors on one side of the Earth did not match the number of neutrinos in the same state detected on the other side of the Earth, implying some had 'gone missing' in between, which was unexpected as neutrinos have a very weak interaction with more massive particles (i.e. what the Earth is mostly made up of.)

      The experiment then counted the number of neutrinos in an alternative state hitting detectors on the other side of the Earth, and lo and behold, there was a very good match with the number of 'missing' neutrinos from the first experiment.

      So not absolute proof, but very good numerical evidence, that while passing through the earth some neutrinos had changed state, so must therefore experience the effects of time, and so must have at least some mass (as anything massless must travel at the speed of light and therefore cannot change state, according to the theory of General Relativity.)

      So much less contentious than climate science I'm afraid.

      1. Alan Brown Silver badge

        Re: Makes particle physics sound like climate science

        "some neutrinos had changed state"

        My suspicion is that they don't so much change state, but are rotating through the universe's other few dimensions, so what we perceive of them changes.

        A 3D analogy would be a tetrahedron rototating in space, with our view constrained so that we can only see the points as they approach us, with each point being painted a different colour.

        1. Graham Marsden
          Thumb Down

          Re: Makes particle physics sound like climate science

          And (again) one of my favourite quotes:

          'The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not “Eureka” but “That's funny...” ' - Isaac Asimov

        2. swm

          Re: Makes particle physics sound like climate science

          Neutrino oscillations are like K meson oscillations which are very well understood. The root cause of the oscillations is that gauge eigenstates are not mass eigenstates and if you produce a particle in a gauge igenstate and measure it in a mass eigenstate you will see oscillations. Trying to reason about this using words and not mathematics doesn't work.

          Actually, the standard model is known to be false at the Planck scale and it is incompatible with general relativity and there is no guarantee that the Feynman diagram sums actually converge etc. but these theories have prediction capabilities of 10 decimal digits so they are better than most all other theories.

    5. dan1980

      Re: Makes particle physics sound like climate science

      @Ledswinger

      Well, you've managed to reduce a series of exacting experiments, conducted by teams of hard-working, dedicated scientists from around the globe to a ridiculous caricature that bears no resemblance to the methods or dedication of these people.

      Congratulations.

      The way it works is that this 'discovery' has been a long time coming. The first real hints of this phenomena came from what was known as the 'solar neutrino problem', where the observations of electron neutrinos coming from the sun did not match what was predicted by the Standard Model.

      The next big part was from measuring muon neutrinos from cosmic rays and noting that the number matched from neutrinos coming from above (the sky) but there was a deficit in the count coming from below (through the Earth).

      This is the important part because it underpins the way theories work and how scientists proceed from them. It is misunderstood - sometime deliberately, it seems - by people criticising 'science'. The assumption they make is that when an experiment disagrees with the theory or the models, that should mean the theory is now bunk but the 'science denier' sees that instead of invalidating the theory, scientists 'fudge' things to make it fit.

      This is not only a gross misunderstanding of what happens but also a slight on the ethics and practices of the scientists themselves.

      The point here is that the Standard Model is utterly astounding in its predictive capability and that predictive capability extends, literally, universally. The predictions of theory and the results of experiments have corresponded so exquisitely, so frequently and in so many instances that it is all but confirmed that it is, largely, on the right track. I don't mean perfect, of course, and I definitely don't mean complete.

      Neutrino oscillation does not break the standard model, it just means that some of the assumption that have been made - specifically that Neturinos are massless - are wrong.

      In a way, what you have described is indeed like the climate change situation in that some people simply misunderstand the way the models work and how scientists fit results into the theories and adjust the models accordingly.

      It's not fudging and it's not disingenuous because that's the way it's supposed to work - you start with a hypothesis and you strengthen it. Eventually, you may bring large groupings of facts and observations together into a theory that ties them up and explains broad swathes of results and behaviours. The theory is then used, sometimes with other theories to build models that make predictions.

      To the specific case here, it's worth noting that the Standard Model doesn't demand or even predict that neutrinos are massless (and therefore couldn't oscillate). The massless nature of neutrinos was fed into it from observations as all experiments seemed to point that way.

      BUT, now that neutrinos have been found to oscillate, existing theories and equations and models can be used to make testable predictions that have been confirmed.

      In the end, these experimental results work in the Standard Model's favour because it's the accuracy of it that allowed scientists to make the predictions that were shown to be false. Broadly, they took an assumption (that neutrinos are massless) and then combined that with the standard model to make predictions about what would be seen in experiments. That the experiments found differently has proven that the original assumption was wrong.

      It should be noted that neutrino mass has not been detected or measured directly and is therefore inferred from the way they have now been shown to behave.

    6. lambda_beta
      Linux

      Re: Makes particle physics sound like climate science

      Again another useless comment!

      You probably meant that the argument for climate change is cause by people, since climate science is a real branch of physics. By the way, there is more evidence that the climate is changing than for neutrino oscillations.

      1. dan1980

        Re: Makes particle physics sound like climate science

        @lambda_beta

        Well, climate change is of course a fact and there is no doubt from anyone at all that climate change exists. The question comes when discussing the causes and what can be done about it - if indeed anything can.

        But neutrino oscillations are as close to a fact as you're going to get in physics; that's just the way the mysterious little buggers are. Large swathes of modern physics would have to be wrong if they don't, in fact, oscillate.

    7. Faux Science Slayer

      particle physics actually CONTROLS climate

      Earth has +2 million cubic miles of fissionable Uranium and Thorium which have a constant decay rate ONLY if there is constant particle bombardment. Since solar and cosmic neutrinos vary, and Earth has partial protection from a variable magnetosphere, we get a variable fission rate. This controls volcanic and tectonic activity as well as the outgas and heat byproducts that control the climate. This is a linked solar EMR and particle flux system with multiple buffering systems, see

      "Motive Force for All Climate Change" and related Geo-nuclear research at FauxScienceSlayer site.

    8. Marshalltown

      Re: Makes particle physics sound like climate science - not at all

      To match the pattern in U.S. climate science, the Standard Model would have been verified. By adjusting the the data, they would have shown that there really was no mass. No, this was science as it should be done.

  2. A Non e-mouse Silver badge
    Headmaster

    Faulty Patch

    The problem with the faster-than-light neutrino results was due to two errors:

    First, a fiber cable hadn't been correctly inserted. This is the primary fault that produced the apparent faster-than-light speed.

    A second error with a clock actually reduced the apparent speed slightly.

    Source: Wikipedia

    1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

      Re: Faulty Patch

      There was a pretty good article in Nautil.us Magazine with the guy who was in charge when the "interesting result" was blown into the memesphere by incontinent reporting. Can't find the reference now....

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Completeness of the Standard Model

    I don't think that any theoretical physicist has ever thought that the Standard Model was complete. I'd even go as far to say that the Standard Model isn't really a theory; whilst it's very good at predicting what will happen it doesn't explain why it will happen, except as a consequence of what happens.

    Remember that much of the Standard Model is predicated on it being intrinsically impossible to know some aspects of it with certainty; they can only be dealt with statistically. The discovery of the Higg's Bosun is an example of this.

    1. Thecowking

      Re: Completeness of the Standard Model

      the Higgs bosun was in the fo'c'sle all along.

      Arr, that be no mystery nor conundrum.

      1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

        Re: Completeness of the Standard Model

        the Higgs bosun was in the fo'c'sle all along.

        With Capt'n Kirk, aye!

    2. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
      Headmaster

      Re: Completeness of the Standard Model

      Remember that much of the Standard Model is predicated on it being intrinsically impossible to know some aspects of it with certainty

      Well, that's Quantum Mechanics, not the Standard Model.

      And you better deal with it. Newton's universe is gone. The universe MAY still be shown to completely deterministic (van t'Hooft had written a paper on this a few years back) but you will never be sure, living in the inside.

  4. DavCrav

    The electrons are angry

    Wait, hold on just one second. So, what you are saying is: the neutrinos have mutated? Are they going to heat up the planet next? If so, the (shit) movie 2012 is right after all, just a few years too late.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXqUcuE8fNo (see 3:00 in)

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: The electrons are angry

      Put better by Dara:

      https://youtu.be/c2IqI7gOE54?t=1h11m5s

    2. dan1980

      Re: The electrons are angry

      I believe the idea is that what we once thought of as a 'neutrino' is not what it actually is. There is no such thing as an 'electron neutrino' nor a 'muon neutrino', nor a 'tau neutrino' - at least not so far as a it could be considered a particle with a definite and immutable nature.

      All neutrinos are mixtures, thus what is observed as an 'electron neutrino' (by its weak interaction to produce an electron) is really a neutrino that has been detected while in a particular mixture (superposition) of the three neutrino masses.

      Alternatively, a neutrino with a single mass (even though that mass is unknown) is a neutrino caught in a particular mixture of the electron, muon and tau types.

      Thus, neutrinos are not 'mutating' but created as a multi-faceted, superimposed collection of states that, by its very nature, morphs back and forth between them as it travels - like a person going from happy to content to sad and back again. All those emotional states are bound up in the person but one predominates at any given time.

      Not that any of that is supposed to make sense - it is quantum physics, after all - but that's the way it apparently is and I, for one, think it's just amazingly cool that the world works in a way that I not only don't understand but that I can't understand in any intuitive sense.

      I am not a religious person by any stretch but if I imagine a 'god' responsible for all of this, then that is the kind of god that I can get on board with.

      1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
        Holmes

        Re: The electrons are angry

        Very correct, of course its makes totally sense, it's the way the machinery works. The fact that large-scale stuff filtered through the perceptive system does not behave this way but behaves according to some other description is neither here nor there.

        I don't know what cancer of the Internet downvotes here.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Facepalm

    Funny thing...

    When I heard this on the news they said that NEUTRONS had mass...

    Yeah... I already knew that...

  6. Roger Greenwood
    Joke

    That detector . . .

    . . . do you think it might be used to find the conscience of Tony Blair next?, because that's REALLY small.

    1. Mark 85

      Re: That detector . . .

      Could be.... I was thinking Obama but Blair as a guinea pig will work.

    2. Chemist

      Re: That detector . . .

      ". . . do you think it might be used to find the conscience of Tony Blair next?, because that's REALLY small."

      Why the joke icon ?

  7. Mage Silver badge

    Dark matter?

    Is it really Bertie Bot's all flavour Neutrinos?

  8. Ugotta B. Kiddingme
    Thumb Up

    hooray for science!

    Keep this up and we might actually learn a little something about the universe.

  9. G Mac
    Joke

    Wait, a coffee cup sized detector?

    Sure that isn't just a strong Brownian Motion generator and they are actually building an... Infinite Probability Drive???

    1. Vic

      Re: Wait, a coffee cup sized detector?

      Sure that isn't just a strong Brownian Motion generator and they are actually building an... Infinite Probability Drive???

      No. That would be a tea mug-sized detector.

      Vic.

  10. Stevie

    Bah!

    Wasn't the neutrino only invented to make the nuclear fission sums work? Something called The Mass Defect if I remember Mr Miller's O level physics classes right.

    1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

      Re: Bah!

      Yes, particle decay. Energy and momentum should sum to zero.

  11. breakfast Silver badge
    Coat

    Always with the neutrinos these days

    With the kids these days it's all neutrino this and neutrino that, nobody even talks about the old trinos any more.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Re. Always with the neutrinos these days

    It is also interesting to note that there *could* be a connection to EmDrive.

    Very small anomalous thrust which scales with power input and other factors, and even shows a slight diurnal change as well implying that whatever generates the thrust isn't native to Earth.

    The current hypothesis is that axions produced by the Sun interacting with the chamber are being somehow vented from the small end like a jet engine due to the microwave field, allowing for apparent violation of Newton's 2nd Law.

    This probably would explain most of the observed effects and suggests that shorter wavelengths might produce more thrust for a given power input.

    The connection here is that axions interacting with neutrinos might be what causes them to oscillate in the way seen, therefore a neutrino beam setup could have indirectly detected axions.

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