Oh, that one. We neutrinos don't discuss them much; they're a tad too eccentric, even for us.
I will tell you that they're really not particularly welcome among decent particles, as you can see from the diagram below.
Posted on 07/27/2004 12:34:34 PM PDT by PatrickHenry
Two of the biggest physics breakthroughs during the last decade are the discovery that wispy subatomic particles called neutrinos actually have a small amount of mass and the detection that the expansion of the universe is actually picking up speed.
Now three University of Washington physicists are suggesting the two discoveries are integrally linked through one of the strangest features of the universe, dark energy, a linkage they say could be caused by a previously unrecognized subatomic particle they call the "acceleron."
Dark energy was negligible in the early universe, but now it accounts for about 70 percent of the cosmos. Understanding the phenomenon could help to explain why someday, long in the future, the universe will expand so much that no other stars or galaxies will be visible in our night sky, and ultimately it could help scientists discern whether expansion of the universe will go on indefinitely.
In this new theory, neutrinos are influenced by a new force resulting from their interactions with accelerons. Dark energy results as the universe tries to pull neutrinos apart, yielding a tension like that in stretched rubber band, said Ann Nelson, a UW physics professor. That tension fuels the expansion of the universe, she said.
Neutrinos are created by the trillions in the nuclear furnaces of stars such as our sun. They stream through the universe, and billions pass through all matter, including people, every second. Besides a minuscule mass, they have no electrical charge, which means they interact very little, if at all, with the materials they pass through.
But the interaction between accelerons and other matter is even weaker, Nelson said, which is why those particles have not yet been seen by sophisticated detectors. However, in the new theory, accelerons exhibit a force that can influence neutrinos, a force she believes can be detected by a variety of neutrino experiments already operating around the world.
"There are many models of dark energy, but the tests are mostly limited to cosmology, in particular measuring the rate of expansion of the universe. Because this involves observing very distant objects, it is very difficult to make such a measurement precisely," Nelson said.
"This is the only model that gives us some meaningful way to do experiments on earth to find the force that gives rise to dark energy. We can do this using existing neutrino experiments."
The new theory is advanced in a paper by Nelson; David Kaplan, also a UW physics professor; and Neal Weiner, a UW research associate in physics. Their work, supported in part by a grant from the U.S. Department of Energy, is detailed in a paper accepted for publication in an upcoming issue of Physical Review Letters, a journal of the American Physical Society.
The researchers say a neutrino's mass can actually change according to the environment through which it is passing, in the same way the appearance of light changes depending on whether it's traveling through air, water or a prism. That means that neutrino detectors can come up with somewhat different findings depending on where they are and what surrounds them.
But if neutrinos are a component of dark energy, that suggests the existence of a force that would reconcile anomalies among the various experiments, Nelson said. The existence of that force, made up of both neutrinos and accelerons, will continue to fuel the expansion of the universe, she said.
Physicists have pursued evidence that could tell whether the universe will continue to expand indefinitely or come to an abrupt halt and collapse on itself in a so-called "big crunch." While the new theory doesn't prescribe a "big crunch," Nelson said, it does mean that at some point the expansion will stop getting faster.
"In our theory, eventually the neutrinos would get too far apart and become too massive to be influenced by the effect of dark energy any more, so the acceleration of the expansion would have to stop," she said. "The universe could continue to expand, but at an ever-decreasing rate."
Aha!
I knew it!
Damn the neutrinos, full speed ahead!
1. Bush did it.is certainly free to do so, but please address your posts to someone other than me.
2. Daschle is deeply sadened.
3. It's only a theory.
4. Some full-screen Star Trek pic.
5. Etc.
Interesting ping.
BTTT.
Neutrinos have mass. Clams have legs.
indeed.
Here is an email I wrote on May 28 of this year:
Hey,
OK, about ten years ago, I had fantasies that I was a good cosmological theorist, with deep, penetrating understanding of the cosmos.
So I mucked around with the standard universal constants and plain old physical models and derived the following equation:
Mu = (8 Pi/3)(C cubed Tu/G)
where Mu is the mass of the universe, Tu is the age, C is the speed of light, and G is the universal constant of gravitation.
I even wrote it on a slip of paper and hung it over my desk at work hoping, I don't know, maybe people would bow when they passed me or something.
So, the other night, I'm reading a short treatise, and Lo! and Behold! and whatever else, here it comes, on page 2:
a = CTu = 2GMu / C squared !!!!!! (1)
Yay!!
Not that it's all that important, but what it means is: The mass of the universe is growing linearly with the time, but the volume is growing as the cube of the time, so the density is falling as the square of the time. It basically means it's getting bigger and fatter but in a weird way, kind of evaporating.
But don't start packing yur bags or getting your knickers in a knot, it will take trillions of years.
So I'm writing this note to brag a little, after all, I beat them stupid russkies by six years, and they even forgot the right coefficient to determine the volume of a sphere!
Too much vodka, I guess.
References
(1) Dimensionless constants of the fundamental physical interactions viewed by the model of expansive nondecelerative universe
Sima, Sukenik, Sukenikova
Slovak Technical University, Bratislava, Slovakia 1999
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-bib_query?1991Ap%26SS.178..169S
http://xxx.arxiv.cornell.edu/abs/gr-qc/9910094
Danger Will Robinson, he's lost in space.
Thought you should see this...
;-)
That would be the Deceleron.
Now three University of Washington physicists are suggesting the two discoveries are integrally linked through one of the strangest features of the universe, dark energy, a linkage they say could be caused by a previously unrecognized subatomic particle they call the "acceleron."
Dark energy was negligible in the early universe, but now it accounts for about 70 percent of the cosmos.
And that's the only introduction it gives us to "dark energy". Nothing about what it actually is or believed to be, only the fact that there's a lot more of it now than in the old days. As if that helps elucidate anything.
And 70% by what standard of measurement? Volume? Weight? Mojo? I just wish they'd throw us a bone once in awhile.
Nutrino! This isn't your mothers ether!
Etc.
Oops!
Dark energy did it, I believe it, and that settles it!
Accelerons seem to be the moderates in the subatomic realm. Almost undetectable, looks different depending on where you see them, they are being pulled apart and are responsible for the dark energy that will destroy the universe.
So the big crunch could occur eventually afterall. Just further out in time than some have imagined.
Thanks for the ping!
Now, is that really necessary? Hmmph!
I want to know how this impacts the airspeed of an unladen swallow.
Perhaps if you used two swallows.
I KNEW the Evos were largely rabble.
The universe is like a rubber innertube that somebody poked a hole in at the time of the Big Bang and is now turning it inside out through that hole.
Just monkeying around
We Know there are LARGE, Subatomic Forces at work in our Universe; we have only the Vaguest idea what they do.
By the time we figure out "What They Do," the "Universe will probably have already Collapsed!!!!"
Doc
Thanks for the ping!
I think we're on the other side of a black hole, and when the black hole was formed in some other space, and collapsed from normal matter to whatever, that was our big bang.
The real revolution in physics will come when they realize that gravity is not CAUSED by matter. Gravity is a toplogical effect of empty space. We see its EFFECT on matter.
btt
When in doubt, introduce a new particle. That's how I myself was invented.
I came across an old gravity theory that was discarded when relativity came along. This theory, which was weak in that it didn't lend itself to mathematical treatment, said that the planets form where the gravity is strongest. That is, even if Jupiter did not exist, its gravitational field would be there. It was called the vortex theory of gravity. Neat, eh?
What about the Strange Quark?
Had to read your post a couple of times to absorb that concept. Interesting, but I don't understand how empty space has toplogy to begin with.
Topology is, first and foremost, the study of space(s), and how they can be mapped one to one. Whether they are open/closed, bounded/unbounded, compact/complex.
Is it alright for me to say: 'The West must do somthing about it....'?
As opposed to the subject studied in school, a topology is a structure imputed to a lattice (such as the Boolean lattice of sets ordered by inclusion).
To have a topology,therefore, one has to have a set of alements first, and that is what question was about.
Indeed, if space is empty, it cannot have a nontrivial topology.
Most of us, quarks, are strange...
Mussels have beards.
Thanks for explaining it. Even though I got an A, you explained it much better than my college professor did.
Oh, that one. We neutrinos don't discuss them much; they're a tad too eccentric, even for us.
I will tell you that they're really not particularly welcome among decent particles, as you can see from the diagram below.
By the way, I don't see what's so odd about that omega character. Looks alot like a regular old antiproton to me (about the right mass and charge), but then, I'm not familiar with all these characters.
What is that?
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