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Do Neutrinos Have Mass?

Posted by michael on from the but-were-afraid-to-ask dept.

amyjigglypuff writes "MINOS, a joint project between Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and the University of Minnesota, is going to attempt to uncover the mysteries of the neutrino. Scientists plan to study the mass of neutrinos, whether they are stable or oscillate, and their electromagnetic structure. If they are found to have mass, it could prove that neutrinos are responsible for the cosmic "dark matter" that has baffled scientists for decades. Here is a link for scientists and a summary for the general public."

2 of 50 comments (clear)

  1. What's really neat about neutrinos by Mt._Honkey · · Score: 4, Interesting

    is that they carry away a significant portion of the energy that stars emit. Something on the order of a few % of the Sun's power is radiated away through neutrinos. Neutron stars cool down because their energy is carried away by neutrinos. It really gets cool in supernovae, because as much as 40% of a supernova's energy is in the form of neutrinos. I believe that this can be detected in theory, but I don't remember if it ever has been.

    Another neat thing is that there may be a 4th neutrino that does not interact via the weak force. Imagine that! It has already been said that a neutino is as close to nothing you can get and still have something, but a neutino that does not weakly interact is virtualy undetectable!

    Cool stuff, if you like physics.


    PIFMA-GASP

    --

    Don't Bogart the fish sticks
    1. Re:What's really neat about neutrinos by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      No such neutrino exists, as far as anyone can tell.

      The existence of a sterile neutrino family is strongly suggested by combining the results of the LSND experiment with other [more recent] neutrino data. However it is by no means a certain thing.

      IIRC, one of the goals of (Mini)BooNE is to see if test this specifically.

      I am not a neutrino person myself, but from what I heard at a seminar last week I can tell you that the existence of an additional neutrino family of low mass is still considered quite possible by the experts. I believe that lepton universality can directly measure the number of kinds of non-sterile light neutrinos.