Neutrinos 'topple matter theory'

The photomultipliers of Japan's Super-Kamiokande detector
A study involving the world's largest underground tank of water has concluded neutrino particles are a mystery.

john

news.bbc.co.uk...

As far as i know, because it happens to be a phycisist, neutrinos are not that a mystery. Altough they are travelling with the speed of light since they are assumed to be massless, apparently they are not, but they have masses close to zero, a few ev/c^2. Otherwise a few electronvolts per squared speed of light.

These particles can be detected using appropriate detectors, since 1987, when we received a lot of these particles from the explosion of a supernovae called 1987A, as far as i remember, there have been similar experiments trying to detect these particles. You know that if we spot a supernovae explosion then it is more likely to has happened years and years ago, from a few thousands to a few millions or billions, this is how much time takes for the speed of light to reach our planet!!

The neutrino and its antiparticle the antineutrino was theoretically predicted, in the neutron decay process, when a neutron decays and produces a proton an electron and an antineutrino. If you are aware with modern physics, we assume that all particles come are different forms of the same energy, for example the neutron becomes a proton and the proton becomes a neutron due to the exhange particles of the strong nuclear force. So you can imagine that a lot of particles theoretically and practically exist.

An example of what i am saying is an indication we have for a PENTAQUARK,
which actually means five quarks together to form a particle??? We don't even know what is going on....

Fun stuff....I wonder if string theory has any explination of this.

My knowledge of sting theory is only laymans level, but i wouldn't be surprized if there was an extra dimensional explination for this much like gravity and the graviton.

TN1: what exactly is the problem with the pentaquark? In other words, what is there in QCD or the standard theory that allows for particles made from two and three quarks, but nothing higher?

Is the argument something from symmetry -- ie, 5-fold symmetry wouldn't work -- or is it something from dynamics -- ie, no one's figured out a stable "orbiting configuration" for a 5-quark body? Feel free to give a technical explanation.

It's just that we classically know quarks to work into simple groups of 3.

The pentaquark particle was just a big surprise in that it had never been witnessed before. We had no reason to think it would be needed, yet, there it was, and it startled and baffled physicists. Sort of turned things upside down.

At least, that's what the 15 year old aspiring physicist thinks.. I can't be too sure, as I don't know the math to prove or disprove it yet.

I'm not a physicist or even a good math student, but I'm reasonably bright on occasion, and I have heard a thing or two about neutrinos, so I'd like to just toss in my first impression and have it shot down just so I can watch it burn...
(in other words, I don't know about the following- i'm asking.)

Neutrinos travel the speed of light, (?somehow) appear to have certain physical properties, but do not appear to have mass, am I right so far?
Suppose they are extra-dimensional, occuring at the point directly next to us on an extradimensional plane.
Could they appear to travel the speed of light because they aren't actually traveling through the space we think they are perhaps, but through a shorter (differntly curved) path through the space of a dimension higher than those in which we generally think?
Could they exert influence on our world without being tangible because they are in extremely close proximity on the extradimensional plane- therefore exerting influence from that direction while not being observable from any direction that we can concieve of?

(If this sounds stupid I hope I will become more relevant as I do a little more reading... I am just starting to struggle through Michio Kaku's Hyperspace.)

Hmmm...So Neutrinos might have mass...hmm very interesting. Could this also mean that some other so-called massless particles have mass too? I have no idea and since I am no scientist I'll wait for someone more knowledgable to answer.

ok, this is what i know about neutrinos. Radiated by the sun, the earth stops i think its 2% of neutrinos that hit us. the other 98% pass straight through. And i got this nibble of information from a mathematician's book in the 1970s. so he was either was making it up or people knew about neutrinos earlier that the aforementioned mid 80s.

We detect particles through their influences on other things. i.e an electromagnetic effect such as charge, which is how we detect things such as protons and electrons, by using an electromagnetic field.

Unfortunately neutrinos are both very tiny, very fast, and are hardly affected by any fields or forces.

I thnk they detected them in particle collisions too? By having missing energy loss in a collision they were predicted or somthing.

Hello everyone,

someone asked me about the pentaquark and what does it mean. Fisrt of all, coming back to the neutrinos, sorry that i cannot provide you with links, since with a simple search you can find lot's of documents and i am not sure which one is good for someone with no science or mathematical background. Try to avoid the most complicated explanations and the most mathematical, i am too avoiding these things as well!!!

Now the neutrino indeed has a mass, it is a tiny particle, but it has a mass!!
As i told you a few electronvolts per squared speed of light. And it is travelling with the speed of light. In neuclear reactions the neutrino has been theoretically predicted and practically 'seen'. Since 1987 there have been many experiments and research in the field and they indeed have detected a lot of them. Our sun is a source of these tiny particles as well as all stars, especially the higher mass stars, like supernovae.

Now for those asking about the quarks, the quarks appear to be on a formation of two to three. For example a proton has 2up quarks and one down. The neutrons have 2down and one up. Therefore you can explain why the neutron does not attrack the electron, but the proton does!!!!

For example the up quark has a charge of +2/3(using numbers), so the proton = 2up + 1down has a total charge of +2/3+2/3-1/3 = 1.
The down quark has a charge of -1/3. Now the neutron has a total charge of 2down + 1up = -1/3-1/3+2/3=0.

The pentaquark it may be 2up one down one strange and one charm let's say. Where strange and charm the other 'flavours' as we called them. This will give a total charge of +2/3+2/3-1/3+2/3-1/3=4/3?? More than one??
I am not quite sure, not for the maths, but the charge of such particle.

Don't forget that quaks may not be the simplest form of matter, that 'may' with great precision, since each one is a different manifestation of a string!!

That's all for now, try to find something about the Higgs Boson, the particle said to give 'life' to everything else, i don't remember its mass. Can someone have a look on that?? This is a great challenge!!! Also the top quark is a mystery since it hasn't been discovered so far, unless a new theory has alredy created that i am not aware of.

See you guys.

TN1:

I don't see that 5 quarks automatically gives you a charge problem:

(1/3 -1/3) + (2/3 - 1/3 - 1/3) = 0

(2/3 + 1/3) + (1/3 + 1/3 - 2/3) = 1,

etc., and so if you pick any known 2-quark particle and any known 3-quark particle -- each of which will have integer charge (and if I remember right -1,0,1 are the options) -- you get a set of 5 quarks whose charges will sum to an integer value. If you require that the particle's charge be one of -1,0,1 you can still do this simply by ruling out those combinations of quarks that don't sum to one of those values.

So I'm still not seeing the inherent problem with the pentaquark per se based on charges, as it just seems that as is the case with 2 and 3 quark particles the need for the charges to sum to an integer would simply restrict the possible combinations of quarks. Is there some other conserved quantity (spin? color? I've heard both) where there isn't any valid 5-quark configuration for?

i like what someone said earlier about neutrinos originating from another dimension....how do we rule out pentaquarks being the sum of entities from 2 different dimensions?

victor was right

Particle physics is getting sort of iffy right now since M-theory (aka string theory) came on the scene. It would seem that particle act freely in up to 10 physical dimensions, thus particle physics has to deal with what we see and what might be there that we can't see.

CERN should help a lot since it will deal with much heavier partcles at high energies. We'll have to wait an see.