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Chameleon-Like Behavior of Neutrino Confirmed
Anonymous Apcoheur writes "Scientists from CERN and INFN of the OPERA Collaboration have announced the first direct observation of a muon neutrino turning into a tau neutrino. 'The OPERA result follows seven years of preparation and over three years of beam provided by CERN. During that time, billions of billions of muon-neutrinos have been sent from CERN to Gran Sasso, taking just 2.4 milliseconds to make the trip. The rarity of neutrino oscillation, coupled with the fact that neutrinos interact very weakly with matter, makes this kind of experiment extremely subtle to conduct. ... While closing a chapter on understanding the nature of neutrinos, the observation of neutrino oscillations is strong evidence for new physics. The Standard Model of fundamental particles posits no mass for the neutrino. For them to be able to oscillate, however, they must have mass.'"
Reading TFS made me very excited about the potential fundamental developments in physics. Except I don't know a thing about physics, so I'm really not sure what I'm excited about. All these words like muon, tau, and neutrino have little place in my everyday life, but they sound so interesting!
This is what the Average American must feel like when they hear stories about Web x.0 laden with the latest buzzwords on CNN. I can finally relate!
That would be pretty amazing as it would violate the Special Theory of Relativity, one of the most tested theories of all time. The problem is, according to Special Relativity, massless particles move at the speed of light, and time does not advance for them. (If you could build a massless clock, its hands would never move.) Oscillations require a time scale. There is a time period of oscillation, or rather the probabilities of being found in a specific state (mu vs. tau, for instance) oscillate with time. Since time stands still for massless particles, this can't happen.
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
The point is that, if two different theories have the exact same predictions, they are for all intents and purposes the same theory, and describe the same universe. If that is the case, why would you spend more time teaching and learning the more complex one, when a simple explanation is enough and (by definition, since they have the same predictions) you can't tell which one is correct?
Of course, if the new theory offers a good explanation to current data, but has a different prediction than the standard model in other, still-non-tested scenarios, the theory is more interesting. You can test it at the new scenario, and you'll be able to tell them apart. This is why* we study, for example, supersymmetry and extra dimensions theories: they behave just like the standard model where we have tested it, but can be different in other cases such as the LHC.
* = of course there are other motivations to develop the theories, but they are taken seriously because they are compatible with the SM and are testable. A theory whose predictions were exactly the same as the SM for every case wouldn't be worth studying, simply because you'd never be able to see if it is right.