It’s hard to believe that such an alien sight exists on our Pale Blue Dot. Photographed by Emmanuel Coupe, this photo shows frozen gas bubbles in a Canadian lake. In his own words: More
Two research teams have found new evidence of transformations in elusive elementary particles called neutrinos. The findings may finally help explain why the universe didn’t vanish shortly after its birth.
“These results are just the beginning of the story for neutrinos,” said physicist Robert Plunkett of Fermilab in Chicago. “They could lead to clues and tell us why there’s now far more matter than antimatter.”
Most neutrinos are emitted by the sun, and are so small and ghostly that billions pass through our bodies every second. Most go right through Earth without hitting anything. But some human-built devices—slabs of iron and plastic, big chambers of oil or water lined with photon detectors, or detector arrays plunged into seawater or Antarctic ice—can record the blip of light when a neutrino occasionally slams into an atom.
Using these detection events, physicists have identified three types of neutrino, called muon, tau and electron neutrinos. Further discoveries suggested that each type can transform into another, with muon-to-tau and tau-to-electron neutrino transformations being dominant, at least in particle-accelerator-powered experiments. Researchers proposed a third and weaker change, that of muon-to-electron neutrinos, but until now lacked evidence for its existence.
On June 14, the Japanese Tokai-to-Kamioka experiment reported the significant detection of muon-to-electron neutrino changes. On June 24, the Main Injector Neutrino Oscillation Search (MINOS) experiment at Fermilab reported the same. While the ranges of their data varied, the basic claims were the same.
“[The values] differ because we used different techniques and distances, but they overlap at one part. They’re complementary,” said Plunkett, a co-spokesperson of MINOS.
With a more complete understanding of neutrino transformation in hand, Plunkett said physicists can now design experiments to investigate larger questions about the universe. The largest among them: why there’s far more matter than antimatter.
Matter and antimatter particles annihilate when they meet. Each type is thought to have appeared in equal proportions shortly after the Big Bang, yet the matter-rich universe as we know it still exists. As a result, physicists are seeking evidence of “asymmetries,” in which matter-antimatter encounters end up emitting more matter particles.
Some matter-favoring asymmetry shows up in the annihilation of quarks, though the effect is relatively meager. But physicists say a muon-to-electron neutrino transformation supports the possibility of more significant asymmetries.
“We now have a good enough handle on neutrinos to design experiments and try to address such a big mystery,” Plunkett said.
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Neutrino transformation could help explain mystery of matter
The shift away from landlines continues, as 24.9 percent of all American adults now live in homes with wireless-only voice connections. Among younger adults aged 25 to 29, the numbers are twice as high; more than half have only a cell phone.
Don't feel too bad for the phone companies. The largest wireline companies, such as AT&T and Verizon, are linked with wireless units that have cashed in on the switch to cell phones and now rake in huge profits.
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Half of US twenty-somethings have no landline
Christian at Military.com’s Kit Up! has heard an interesting rumor on one of the technologies that Seal Team 6 used to kill Osama bin Laden: Night vision contact lenses! Holy pants, Batman. More
Microsoft just showed off their vision of what Office 365 in the cloud will look like. As you can see, it looks a lot like Google Apps! That’s not a bad thing. More
Mr. John Morris, speaking about IPV6 and how it will affect you and your business.
John Morris is a Systems & Network Administrator in the RTP Area of North Carolina and received the NIH (National Institutes of Health) Director’s award for Information Security in 2007. Over the past 12 years he has worked in IT in a variety of industries and areas from scientific and high-performance computing, public and private sector as well as a large regional hosting provider in the Southeastern US.
As far as sports go, the one where you drive cars around in circles several times is likely not one of the most energy efficient. With that in mind, it’s nice to see locations like Northern California’s Infineon Raceway working toward sustainability, announcing this week the installation of more than 1,600 solar panels. The panels, manufactured by Panasonic, will provide around 41-percent of the Infineon’s energy usage. Also on its list of earth-friendly features: a solar-powered billboard and 3,000 sheep, which take care of a lot of the lawn mowing on the grounds and apparently aren’t of the electric variety.
Continue reading California raceway gets 1,600 solar panels, flaunts green track status
California raceway gets 1,600 solar panels, flaunts green track status originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 28 Jun 2011 05:06:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
It’s hard to believe that such an alien sight exists on our Pale Blue Dot. Photographed by Emmanuel Coupe, this photo shows frozen gas bubbles in a Canadian lake. In his own words: More
Homo sapiens may have had religion since the dawn of our evolution, but building vast monuments to our beliefs is a relatively recent development. And by “recent,” I mean 11,600 years ago. Archaeologists believe they’ve found the oldest temple ever built, in southern Turkey. More