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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.'"

16 of 86 comments (clear)

  1. Re:New ways to generate... gravity? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    A quick look at wiki shows that gravitons are still unproven.

    Pions are appareantly mesons (they have a quark and an antiquark) and decay to muons or gamma rays.

    I'm not sure if there's any proposed relationship between pions and gravitons, though for that matter I'm not quite sure what a pion or a graviton is.

    I will say that conversion of enery to matter and vice-veresa, in and of itself, seems to be old news.

  2. get Particles out of a vacuum by rossdee · · Score: 3, Funny

    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.

  3. Peons by Tablizer · · Score: 2

    It's just like work: a bunch of pions popping in and out of a corporate vacuum.

  4. Re:Getting something from nothing? by Tough+Love · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.
  5. Re:Getting something from nothing? by Electricity+Likes+Me · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Rendering artifacts due to floating point precision!

  6. Non-paywalled version by amaurea · · Score: 4, Informative

    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?

    1. Re:Non-paywalled version by BarbaraHudson · · Score: 4, Informative

      The GP is wrong. The article I linked to is NOT pay-walled, and contains the link to the arXiv.org paper. Either they didn't read the article (so they didn't know that there was already a link to arXiv) or they're just trying to make something out of nothing - kind of like this experiment did :-)

      --
      "Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
    2. Re:Non-paywalled version by rmdingler · · Score: 3, Funny
      Right.

      If you keep that shit up, people will start skipping the articles entirely.

      --
      Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

      Ernest Hemingway

  7. Re:New ways to generate... gravity? by lkcl · · Score: 5, Informative

    pions are basically made up of quarks just like the neutron and the proton: there's nothing magical about it, and has absolutely nothing to do with gravitons (if such even exist except as a mathematical concept). the difference is that pions only contain two quarks (rather than three) and so they're not stable. imagine throwing two magnets into the air very very carefully and having them spin around each other for a very brief period of time. if they fly apart, splat no more particle: if they touch, splat no more particle. but for that incredibly short duration where the two quarks successfully spin around each other in close orbit, there you have a "pion".

  8. Horrible Summary by forand · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Horrible Summary by BarbaraHudson · · Score: 2

      (sigh) You're doing it wrong - that link you gave is the wrong one . The article the summary links to has a link to the correct (and non-paywalled) article at arXiv.org. Have a nice day :-)

      --
      "Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
  9. You omitted the relevant arXiv article by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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,

    In conclusion, the coherent production of pions on carbon nuclei for both neutrino and anti-neutrino beams is precisely measured by isolating a sample with no visible nuclear breakup and low |t| transferred to the nucleus.

  10. Re:Uh-oh... by BarbaraHudson · · Score: 2

    Scientists were surprised with penicillin.

    --
    "Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
  11. Tea, by PPH · · Score: 3, Funny

    Earl Grey, hot.

    --
    Have gnu, will travel.
  12. Re:New ways to generate... gravity? by Immerman · · Score: 2

    It's also worth mentioning that discovering the existence of gravitons would blow a hole in General Relativity - it's one of the areas where quantum mechanics and relativity stand in stark opposition. So unlike the Higgs Boson, gravitons aren't something where the theory all agrees that it should exist, but we just haven't (hadn't) actually spotted it yet.

    --
    --- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
  13. Re:Creation Ex Nihilo! by Immerman · · Score: 2

    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.