Neutrino Mass Confirmed

biohack writes "BBC News reports that results from the MINOS experiment have confirmed that neutrinos have mass. To look for neutrino oscillations, scientists created muon neutrinos in a particle accelerator at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab). After passing through a particle detector at Fermilab, a high intensity beam of neutrinos travelled to another particle detector 724km (450 miles) away in a disused mine in Soudan, US. The set up established that fewer particles were being detected at the Soudan site than had been sent from Fermilab, which confirmed that some neutrinos changed their flavor on the way - an effect called neutrino flavor oscillation, which requires them to have mass. 'To put it simply, if they are heavy, it means that there is a lot more mass in the Universe than we thought there was,' said Professor Jenny Thomas from University College London."

Comments

*shakes head*

[Monkeys!!!]

You know you are a serious geek when you read the headline and say 'YES!' out loud.

Obligatory-

[capz loc]

Neutrinos have mass? I didn't even know they were Catholic!

Re:bragging time

[Trelane]

Yeah, the universe ran out of vanilla, so it's substituting a rich, creamy chocolate.

Yeah, but they both have up- and downsides. While the vanilla is extremely common and thus is not as strange as the chocolate flavour, it still has its charm. But the chocolate is packed with more calories (being more fudge than chocolate) and hence will pack on pounds to your top and bottom.

But the staunch advocates of vanilla aren't at all mute. They've been quite vocal in support of their flavour of choice and have even proposed creating a new sub-flavour, the electric vanilla. Unfortunately for them, however, due to the long legacy of having only vanilla, people have been taught to expect vanilla to be boring. Therefore, the electric vanilla is expected to flop.

Temporarily relieving the boring-vanilla problem, however, someone long ago discovered vanilla in red, green, and blue colours (as well as in cyan, magenta, and yellow, but those are really just the opposite of the other colours). One would hope that the new chocolate flavour would also come in similar colours and--thus far--this seems to be the case.

My humblest apologies for this post; I've been learning particle physics by grading homework in it, and I suspect it's driven me quite mad.