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Experiments Create Particles Out of a Vacuum Using Neutrinos
BarbaraHudson writes: In a new series of experiments, scientists report (abstract) that neutrinos, notable for how infrequently they interact with matter, can strike a glancing blow on an atom's nucleus, and the side effect is the generation of a new particle out of a vacuum. Professor Kevin McFarland says the creation of the new particle is what shields the nucleus from being blown apart by the collision. "Producing an entirely new particle – in this case a charged pion – requires much more energy than it would take to blast the nucleus apart – which is why the physicists are always surprised that the reaction happens as often as it does. McFarland adds that even painstakingly detailed theoretical calculations for this reaction 'have been all over the map.'"
Is this a way to generate... gravity? I am not a theoretical physicist, but aren't pions once-removed from gravitons? I remember reading and failing to understand something about pion-graviton scattering.
Its probably best to read the instructions
Its better with to ones that have a bag. Those ones with just a cylindrical plastic container that you just tip into the garbage can - even if you don't spill it, some of the smaller particles are going to get back into the air that you breathe.
The Universe is just a simulation. The pion was an attempt to throw more "CPU" cycles at the problem. Now where did that energy come from? And, when will the double-A batteries that run it set to expire?
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That "nothing" is really something. Vacuum quantum fluctuations are physically real, cfr the Casimir effect.
So yeah, if the energy is right you can create particles out of the vacuum.
It's just like work: a bunch of pions popping in and out of a corporate vacuum.
Table-ized A.I.
Where did you get the idea that vaccum is nothing? Actually, vacuum is a very busy place
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
...and that reply was meant for the GP
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Rendering artifacts due to floating point precision!
As usual for physics articles, a non-paywalled version is available on arXiv, and has been so for more than a month before it appeared behind the paywall. Why do people who submit physics stories to slashdot aloways link to the useless paywalled version?
That would explain the uncertainty principle. A little aliasing noise to mask the quantization artifacts.
The link in the summary goes to the wrong paper.
This is the link to the right pre-print paper: http://arxiv.org/abs/1409.3835
There's no "nothing" anywhere in the universe. The only nothingness could be said to have preceded the universe.
The summary is horribly incorrect. There are no new experiments, only new analysis of old experiments. The authors didn't actually do the experiments but "digitize and reanalyze data from both experiments." The summary didn't include the non-paywalled version of the article on arXiv. The summary sensationalizes the results with phrases like "[p]roducing an entirely new particle." (ok it is a quote) which leads non-physicist readers to think this is a new particle as yet unseen when in fact all particles involved are well known. Furthermore, pulling a particle out of the vacuum, especially near such massive and charged objects a nuclei is not at all uncommon. Sure it is a non-electromagnetic process but it isn't odd.
TFS's topic of "Experiments Create Particles Out of a Vacuum Using Neutrinos" is not discussed in the paper
of 18 Nov which you linked, but in McFarland's 25 Nov paper
From the latter,
Actually, to be on the safe side, while you don't understand what you're doing, could you please do it in Alpha Centauri?
If you find a way to block high energy neutrinos from space reaching Earth, then moving equipment to Alpha Centauri should be easy by comparison...
Scientists were surprised with penicillin.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Earl Grey, hot.
Have gnu, will travel.
Pretty sure the title of TFS should have been:
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Toto's on his way to be tutored. They caught him playing with unleashed atoms, now they have to figure out who's going to take all the little pions.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
And that only if the universe is finite. If the universe is infinite (and the evidence suggests that it might well be) then it was probably *always* infinite, and the "big bang" was something that happened within it.
In fact one theory of the nature of the "big bang" is that the original universe was a completely empty false vacuum (i.e. the vacuum energy was stable but at a non-minimum energy) and eventually one point in the vacuum decayed to a lower energy state, spawning normal mass-energy in the process and triggering a chain reaction that expanded through the universe at nearly the speed of light, creating a new "bubble universe" filled with mass-energy. In essence the "big bang" wasn't an explosion of "stuff", it was an explosion of the creation of stuff.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Well, enough glancing blows and you can at least generate hamburger where there used to be elected officials, and that might be an improvement. But the particle accelerator would need to be quite small so that you could swing it effectively.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
So the neutrino (i.e. something other than vacuum) hit another particle (also something other than vacuum), which grabbed some nearby nothingness to create a third particle? Sorry, but to me, the first two parts of it mean you're not creating stuff out of vacuum.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Now they can create solar neutrino panels so I can get power at night.