neutrino source in deep space detected

[Art Blade]

it took 100 years to find the source of cosmic radiation. Apparently the detected neutrino (an exceptionally high energy neutrino of 290 tera electron volt) stems from Blazar TXS 0506+056 in a galaxy some stunning four billion light-years away from earth.

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2018/07/11/science.aat1378
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2018/07/11/science.aat2890

[mandru]

An interesting info vid Art. Thanks for that. 

I'm still working on getting head around Cherenkov radiation.  It's a glow created by a charged particle (the vid said neutrinos are non-charged?) moves through a dielectric medium faster than the phase velocity of light in that medium or at least that's what Wikipedia says.  I've seen pictures of Cherenkov radiation displayed as a blue glow in reactor cores.

[Art Blade]

apparently neutrinos are supposed to be neutral regarding charge but a few don't play by the rules Although you can't see them, you can see the path they took thanks to that glow.

[PZ]

Clearly evidence that there is much more to discover in science 

[mandru]

... but a few don't play by the rules ...

Ah!  Neutrinos with grudges would be negative. 

[Art Blade]

 

[PZ]

 

[Dweller_Benthos]

I was just reading about this, pretty interesting. The stuff that goes on and we don't even know it. Something like 65 billion of these things are winging through you every second and we are oblivious.

[mandru]

I remember reading one of Isaac Asimov's science fact compilations (basically a paperback anthology of his articles) back in the early 80's where the neutrino was the subject of one of the essays.  One thing that Asimov had mentioned about the neutrino that really stood out for me was they (as a swarm) had the ability to pass through a wall 100 miles (roughly 161 km) thick of pure lead with rarely any more interaction than if they were passing through the vacuum of deep space.

Neutrinos surprisingly have less mass than photons which are classically described as being massless but then we all know that E=mc².

Subatomic particles and how they combine and w0#k together to make up the known universe is so mind stretching in my mathematically limited awe and wonder I'm reduced to summing it all up by simply saying 'fascinating stuff'.


On photons a recent epiphany for me is that (in personal observation) when they reach my eye whether issued from a nearby light bulb, our sun, or a distant star in the night sky they have zero age for the frame of time that they exist in as they are moving continuously at the speed of light.

We think of space as being empty but that perceived emptiness is literally buzzing with particles and energies (to borrow from D_B) "winging" though it.  We are only now beginning to scratch the surface of how this patchwork cosmos around us is stitched together.


Neutrinos also come in three flavors. 

[BinnZ]

Subatomic particles and how they combine and w0#k together to make up the known universe is so mind stretching in my mathematically limited awe and wonder I'm reduced to summing it all up by simply saying 'fascinating stuff'.

I so much agree on that....

Something I was thinking of recently:

Imagine a light source, or an object that reflects light. No matter where you are (as long as you're not in the shadow of some other object) you can see the light. At that same moment you can see trillions of other light sources or reflections of lights at that same position.
Now imagine that you move a trillionth of a millimetre to the left. You will still see all of those. How come these particles (photons?) don't influence each other or crash into each other?
Now imagine that you go a thousand miles away from that light source or reflecting object. You will still see it if there's a vacuum in between you and the source and no other light sources 'distracting your attention'. If you move a trillionth of a millimetre to the left (or right) you will still see it. How many of those particles are there?

And if you found the answer to that question, think again what distance actually is.

Spoiler

Well okay, so light isn't a particle, it's a vibration. It vibrates through something. Even in vacuum it vibrates, meaning that this vacuum is actually something. And even trillions of light years away from the source it is still vibrating every inch of something. Doesn't it make the light source infinitely energetic? I mean the amount of points on a circle is infinite, so the energy is dividing itself endlessly. Think again, what energy actually is.

Spoiler

Haven't spoken yet about time... that still boggles me the most.

So yeah, fascinating stuff!

[mandru]

From what I understand photons are both.

Spoiler

Photons under different situations behave as both a particle and a wave which led the scientists to coin the term wavicles to describe them. 

But your description Binn of "all those light sources" backs up the wonder I feel over just how busy supposedly empty space really is.

I've recently heard (shockingly enough) that even magnetic fields themselves that we can observe through pouring iron filings onto a piece of paper that's suspended over a bar magnet are the result of ultra-low energy photons (very high on the electromagnetic spectrum) moving from one end of the magnet to the other.  Crazy stuff. Ya? 

[BinnZ]

Photons being both is the temporary answer to the fact that certain theories can only function assuming that photons are a particle, while other theories can only function assuming photons are a wave.
However, my guess is that particles (mass) are mere energy.