Neutrinos
:
Neutrinos are one of the fundamental particles which make up the universe.
They are also one of the least understood.
Neutrinos are similar to the more familiar electron, with one crucial
difference: neutrinos do not carry electric charge. Because neutrinos
are electrically neutral, they are not affected by the electromagnetic
forces which act on electrons. Neutrinos are affected only by a "weak"
sub-atomic force of much shorter range than electromagnetism, and are
therefore able to pass through great distances in matter without being
affected by it. If neutrinos have mass, they also interact gravitationally
with other massive particles, but gravity is by far the weakest of the
four known forces.
Three types of neutrinos are known; there is strong evidence that no
additional neutrinos exist, unless their properties are unexpectedly
very different from the known types. Each type or "flavor"
of neutrino is related to a charged particle (which gives the corresponding
neutrino its name). Hence, the "electron neutrino" is associated
with the electron, and two other neutrinos are associated with heavier
versions of the electron called the muon and the tau (elementary particles
are frequently labeled with Greek letters, to confuse the layman). The
table below lists the known types of neutrinos (and their electrically
charged partners).
Neutrino
|
|
ve |
|
vµ
|
|
vt
|
Charged
Partner |
|
electron
(e) |
|
muon
(m) |
|
tau
(t) |
Neutrinos
are subatomic particles, and they’re weird. They don’t interact
with matter very much, so to them most of the Universe is transparent.
They can pass right through the Earth without even noticing.
Neutrinos are produced by the decay of radioactive elements and are
elementary particles that lack an electric charge.
From what we know today, a majority of the neutrinos floating around
were born around 15 billion years ago, soon after the birth of the universe.
Since this time, the universe has continuously expanded and cooled,
and neutrinos have just kept on going. Theoretically, there are now
so many neutrinos that they constitute a cosmic background radiation
whose temperature is 1.9 degree Kelvin (-271.2 degree Celsius).
Other
neutrinos are constantly being produced from nuclear power stations,
particle accelerators, nuclear bombs, general atmospheric phenomena
and during the births, collisions, and deaths of stars, particularly
the explosions of supernovae.
Really
though to them the Universe is only mostly transparent. There’s
a very little chance they’ll interact with matter. If you have
enough neutrinos, a small number of them can ping off an atomic nucleus
and create an effect we can measure. The good news is there are a lot
of neutrinos flying around all the time. Billions of them are passing
through you right now!
That
makes them possible to detect if you are patient and careful. Happily,
scientists are both. Neutrino detectors have been assembled in various
parts of the world and have been pretty successful in finding the little
suckers. They use various methods to see them; for example, some use
the fact that when a neutrino slams into a chlorine nucleus, it can
change it into an argon nucleus. Those detectors need huge amounts of
chlorine for this, so they use tetrachloroethylene: dry cleaning fluid!
But
the news today comes from a different kind of detector. This one relies
on the idea that a neutrino passing through ice can create a shower
of subatomic particles, like shrapnel. These particles scream out from
the collision and can actually travel faster than light through the
ice. This sounds impossible, but light speed is the Universal limit
when it’s traveling through a vacuum. Light slows down when passing
through air, or liquid, or matter. So a subatomic particle can travel
faster than light through matter, while still traveling slower than
light does in a vacuum.
[Note:
This is all very, very different than the claim of faster-than-light
neutrinos from 2011. That turned out to be due to an equipment malfunction.]
|
Detectors designed to see the faint flashes of light when neutrinos
interact with ice
|
When
this happens, the particle creates a shock wave, just like a sonic boom
is created when something travels faster than sound. In this case, though,
it’s not a sonic boom, but a photonic boom, a shock wave of light.
This creates a faint blue flash called Cherenkov radiation, and that
can be seen using very sensitive detectors.
Scientists have built just such a device
in Antarctica. It’s called (get this) Ice Cube, and it consists
of a string of detectors lowered 1,500 to 2,000 meters (1 to 1.5 miles)
beneath the very clear ice. At that depth the ice is very smooth and
dark, making it easier to see the flash of light from a neutrino reaction.
Neutrinos come from lots of different
sources. Nuclear reactions in the Sun produce prodigious numbers of
them, as do nuclear reactors on Earth, natural radiation from uranium
decay inside the Earth, and even more exotic phenomena like exploding
stars. These neutrinos all have different energies, so it’s possible
in principle to categorize the source by looking at how energetic the
detected neutrino is.
And that’s where Ice Cube has come through. Out of the countless
detections it’s seen, two of them nicknamed, seriously, Bert and
Ernie were phenomenally, unbelievably energetic: Each had an energy
over one thousand trillion times the energy of a visible light photon.
That’s huge, far larger energies than even the Large Hadron Collider
can create. It’s very roughly equivalent to the energy of a raindrop
hitting you on the head which may not sound like much, but remember
we’re talking about a single subatomic particle with that much
energy.
 |
A detector being lowered into a hole drilled into the ice
|
Not very many things in the Universe
can make neutrinos with that much energy. Super massive black holes
in the centers of galaxies are one possible candidate; they are sloppy
eaters, gobbling down and spewing out fantastically high-energy beams
of matter and energy. Another possible source are gamma-ray bursts;
explosions of stars so violent they are second only to the Big Bang
itself. These typically occur in the very distant Universe, so statistically
speaking if these are the engines making these super-high-energy neutrinos,
then those little particles have traveled a long, long way before hitting
the ice in Antarctica.
The scientists who made this detection
note that they can’t completely rule out less exotic sources;
there’s a 99 percent or so certainty that these neutrinos are
not from some background source. That’s not quite enough to pass
the rigorous standards of particle physicists (they prefer a minimum
of 99.7 percent certainty to make a claim, and really a 99.9999 percent
certainty to claim discovery, like with the Higgs particle last year).
Still, it’s provocative. And what
a claim! Using faster than light particles to detect ghostly but super-high-energy
intergalactic particles that have traveled tens or hundreds of millions
of light years, only to get trapped beneath the Antarctic ice.
Neutrino results challenge a cornerstone
of Albert Einstein's special theory of relativity, which itself forms
the foundation of modern physics
September
22, 2011 |By Geoff Brumfiel and Nature magazine.
Cern
:
An
Italian experiment has unveiled evidence that fundamental particles
known as neutrinos can travel faster than light. Other researchers are
cautious about the result, but if it stands further scrutiny, the finding
would overturn the most fundamental rule of modern physics that nothing
travels faster than 299,792,458 meters per second.
The
experiment is called OPERA (Oscillation Project with Emulsion-t Racking
Apparatus), and lies 1,400 meters underground in the Gran Sasso National
Laboratory in Italy. It is designed to study a beam of neutrinos coming
from CERN, Europe's premier high-energy physics laboratory located 730
kilometers away near Geneva, Switzerland. Neutrinos are fundamental
particles that are electrically neutral, rarely interact with other
matter, and have a vanishingly small mass. But they are all around us
the sun produces so many neutrinos as a by-product of nuclear reactions
that many billions pass through your eye every second.
The
1,800-tonne OPERA detector is a complex array of electronics and photographic
emulsion plates, but the new result is simple the neutrinos are arriving
60 nanoseconds faster than the speed of light allows. "We are shocked,"
says Antonio Ereditato, a physicist at the University of Bern in Switzerland
and OPERA's spokesman.
Breaking the law :
The idea that nothing can travel faster than light in a vacuum is the
cornerstone of Albert Einstein's special theory of relativity, which
itself forms the foundation of modern physics. If neutrinos are traveling
faster than light speed, then one of the most fundamental assumptions
of science that the rules of physics are the same for all observers
would be invalidated. "If it's true, then it's truly extraordinary,"
says John Ellis, a theoretical physicist at CERN.
Ereditato
says that he is confident enough in the new result to make it public.
The researchers claim to have measured the 730-kilometer trip between
CERN and its detector to within 20 centimeters. They can measure the
time of the trip to within 10 nanoseconds, and they have seen the effect
in more than 16,000 events measured over the past two years. Given all
this, they believe the result has a significance of six-sigma the physicists'
way of saying it is certainly correct.
At
least one other experiment has seen a similar effect before, albeit
with a much lower confidence level. In 2007, the Main Injector Neutrino
Oscillation Search (MINOS) experiment in Minnesota saw neutrinos from
the particle-physics facility Fermilab in Illinois arriving slightly
ahead of schedule. At the time, the MINOS team downplayed the result,
in part because there was too much uncertainty in the detectors exact
position to be sure of its significance, says Jenny Thomas, a spokeswoman
for the experiment.
Thomas
says that MINOS was already planning more accurate follow-up experiments
before the latest OPERA result. "I'm hoping that we could get that
going and make a measurement in a year or two," she says.
If
MINOS were to confirm OPERA's find, the consequences would be enormous.
"If you give up the speed of light, then the construction of special
relativity falls down," says Antonino Zichichi, a theoretical physicist
and emeritus professor at the University of Bologna, Italy. Zichichi
speculates that the "superluminal" neutrinos detected by OPERA
could be slipping through extra dimensions in space, as predicted by
theories such as string theory.
Ellis,
however, remains skeptical. Many experiments have looked for particles
traveling faster than light speed in the past and have come up empty-handed,
he says. Most troubling for OPERA is a separate analysis of a pulse
of neutrinos from a nearby supernova known as 1987a. If the speeds seen
by OPERA were achievable by all neutrinos, then the pulse from the supernova
would have shown up years earlier than the exploding star's flash of
light; instead, they arrived within hours of each other. "It's
difficult to reconcile with what OPERA is seeing," Ellis says.
Ereditato
says that he welcomes skepticism from outsiders, but adds that the researchers
have been unable to find any other explanation for their remarkable
result. "Whenever you are in these conditions, then you have to
go to the community," he says.
Sanatkumars :
The
Kumaras are four sages (rishis) who roam the universe as children from
the Puranic texts of Hinduism, generally named Sanak, Sanatan, Sanandan
and Sanatkumar. They are described as the first mind-born creations
and sons of the creator-god Brahma. Born from Brahma's mind, the four
Kumar's undertook lifelong vows of celibacy (brahmacharya) against the
wishes of their father. They are said to wander throughout the materialistic
and spiritualistic universe without any desire but with purpose to teach.
All four brothers studied Ved's from their childhood, and always travelled
together.
Dev
Rishi Narad :
Rishi
Narad is regarded as the Manasaputra, referring to his birth 'from the
mind of Brahma. He is regarded as the Triloka sanchaari, the ultimate
nomad who roams the three lokas of Swargalok (heaven), Mrityulok (earth)
and Patallok (nether-world).
The
Sanatkumars and Rishi Narad can travel anywhere in the universe and
no one can stop them.
Conclusion :
When we combine religion with science we can come to conclusions that
Sanatkumars and Rishi Narad are Neutrinos.