A ‘very interesting’ anomaly found in a major experiment may be big news for physics

The odd gap between theoretical expectations and experimental results in a A major research project on neutrinos This could be a sign of the elusive “sterile” neutrino – a very quiet particle, which can only be detected by the silence it leaves behind.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen an anomaly, and previous experimental data has shown something odd in the world of neutrino research. This time it was found in the Baksan Experiment on Sterile Transformations (BEST).

Concrete evidence of hypothetical sterile neutrinos could provide physicists with strong candidates to supply the mysterious universe with dark matter. On the other hand, this can only cause problems with the paradigm used to describe the old school odd behavior neutrino.

Which is also an important moment in the history of physics.

“The results are very interesting,” Say Los Alamos National Laboratory physicist Steve Elliott.

“This certainly reaffirms the anomaly we have seen in previous experiments. But what that means is not clear. There are now conflicting results about sterile neutrinos. If the results show misunderstandings about basic nuclear or atomic physics, that would be very interesting too.”

Despite ranking among the most abundant particles in the universe, neutrinos are known to be difficult to pick up. When you have virtually no mass, no electric charge, and make your existence known only to the weak nuclear force, it’s easy to slip through the densest of matter unhindered.

The ghostly motion of the neutrino is not only its attractive quality. The quantum waves of each particle change as it takes off, oscillating between different “feels” that echo the resonance of the negatively charged particles – electrons, muons, and tau.

The study of neutrino oscillations in US Los Alamos National Laboratory in the 1990s I see a gap in the flip time that leaves room for a fourth taste, which won’t happen like a ripple in the weak nuclear domain.

Hidden in the silence, the sterile feeling of the neutrino will only be seen with a brief pause in their interaction.

BEST is protected from a cosmic neutrino source under a mile of rock in Russia’s Caucasus Mountains. It features a liquid gallium double chamber tank that patiently collects neutrinos emitted from a radioactive chromium core.

After measuring how much gallium had turned into the germanium isotope in each tank, the researchers were able to work backwards to determine the number of direct collisions with the neutrinos as they oscillated through the electron sense.

Similar to the ‘gallium anomaly’ of the Los Alamos experiment, the researchers counted germanium one-fifth to one-quarter less than expected, indicating a deficit in the expected number of electron neutrinos.

This does not mean with certainty that the neutrino briefly adopted a sterile taste. Many other searches for rather small particles have come up empty-handed, opening up the possibility that the models used to predict transitions are somewhat misleading.

This is not a bad thing in itself. Corrections in the basic framework of nuclear physics can have significant consequences, potentially revealing gaps in Standard shape That could lead to an explanation for some of science’s remaining great mysteries.

If this is indeed a sign of sterile neutrinos, we might end up having evidence of massive amounts of matter, but that only forms a gravitational canvas on the fabric of space.

Whether this is an amount of dark matter or just a piece of the puzzle will depend on further experiments with the most ghostly particles out there.

This research was published in physics test letter Dan physical review c.

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