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Muon Neutrino To Electron Neutrino Oscillation Conclusively Shown
New submitter Chris Greenley writes "The T2K long baseline neutrino experiment in Japan has just announced conclusive evidence for electron to muon neutrino oscillation at the 7.5 sigma level. (The level needed for discovery is 5 sigma.) This experiment generates a focused beam of electron neutrinos using an accelerator in the J-PARC facility north of Tokyo which is aimed at the massive Super-Kamiokande detector 295 km (185 miles) away, near the west coast of Japan. 'This T2K observation is the first of its kind in that an explicit appearance of a unique flavor of neutrino at a detection point is unequivocally observed from a different flavor of neutrino at its production point.' This result clears the way for CP-violation neutrino studies which could show that 'regular' neutrinos act differently than their antimatter counterparts, a phenomenon that so far has only been observed in quarks. If neutrino CP-violation is found, it could explain why there is such a large predominance of matter over antimatter in the universe."
It's only obvious in SU(5). The currently en-vogue SU(2)+SU(3) lie groups only imply it. But you knew that right?
This explanation is insufficient. If neutrinos were indeed massive particles we'd see a wide distribution of their velocities, just like we can observe slow and fast protons, slow and fast electrons, slow and fast everything that moves slower than c. Yet, in 100% of experiments that have been done all neutrinos are propagating through space at the speed close to or exactly equal to c.
The reason for this is the extremely small mass of neutrinoes. The current experimentally-derived upper bounds on their mass is around 1 eV (in contrast, an electron has a mass of 511,000 eV). This means that any process that creates a neutrino will give it enough energy to send it off at ultrarelativistic speeds. Even something simple like neutron decay can impart 1 MeV of kinetic energy to a neutrino, which, as the grandparent calculates, means the neutrino is traveling at 0.999999999999*c. Only chemical reactions would release a small enough amount of energy to have non-relatvistic neutrinos. But, chemical reactions don't release neutrinos.
This is why we only see speed-of-light neutrinos. This is also why it's taken so long to discover that they have mass.