CERN: First Appearance Of Tau Neutrino

First appearance of a tau neutrino event in the OPERA detector at the Gran Sasso Laboratory, proving the neutrino oscillation from the muon type of the CERN beam to the tau type observed.

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Particle Chameleon Caught in the act of Changing

Geneva 31 May 2010. Researchers on the OPERA experiment at the INFN1's Gran Sasso laboratory in Italy today announced the first direct observation of a tau particle in a muon neutrino beam sent through the Earth from CERN, 730km away. This is a significant result, providing the final missing piece of a puzzle that has been challenging science since the 1960s, and giving tantalizing hints of new physics to come.

The neutrino puzzle began with a pioneering and ultimately Nobel Prize winning experiment conducted by US scientist Ray Davis beginning in the 1960s. He observed far fewer neutrinos arriving at the Earth from the Sun than solar models predicted: either solar models were wrong, or something was happening to the neutrinos on their way. A possible solution to the puzzle was provided in 1969 by the theorists Bruno Pontecorvo and Vladimir Gribov, who first suggested that chameleon-like oscillatory changes between different types of neutrinos could be responsible for the apparent neutrino deficit.

Several experiments since have observed the disappearance of muon-neutrinos, confirming the oscillation hypothesis, but until now no observations of the appearance of a tau-neutrino in a pure muon-neutrino beam have been observed: this is the first time that the neutrino chameleon has been caught in the act of changing from muon-type to tau-type.

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OPERA - Oscillation Project with Emulsion-tRacking Apparatus

The OPERA experiment has been designed to perform the most straightforward test of the phenomenon of neutrino oscillations. This experiment exploits the CNGS high-intensity and high-energy beam of muon neutrinos produced at the CERN SPS in Geneva pointing towards the LNGS underground laboratory at Gran Sasso, 730 km away in central Italy. OPERA is located in the Hall C of LNGS and it is aimed at detecting for the first time the appearance of tau-neutrinos from the transmutation (oscillation) of muon-neutrinos during their three millisecond travel from Geneva to Gran Sasso.

In OPERA, tau-leptons resulting from the interaction of tau-neutrinos will be observed in "bricks" of photographic emulsion films interleaved with lead plates. The apparatus contains about 150000 of such bricks for a total mass of 1300 tons and is complemented by electronic detectors (trackers and spectrometers) and ancillary infrastructure. Its construction has been completed in spring 2008 and the experiment is currently in data taking.

Neutrinos are elementary particles postulated by Pauli in the 30's as a "desperate attempt" to save the principle of energy conservation in radioactive beta decays. They have been observed 20 years later emerging from nuclear reactors and, since then, many of their physical properties have been established. There are three types, or "flavors", of neutrinos: electron neutrinos, muon neutrinos and tau neutrinos.

If the rest mass of the neutrinos is different from zero, transitions among different flavors can take place when they propagate through space ("neutrino oscillations"). OPERA is aimed at performing a straightforward test of this phenomenon, trying to identify uniquely the appearance of tau neutrinos from a pure muon-neutrino beam propagating from Geneve to Gran Sasso.

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[spartacandream]

It's amazing how far we've come and that we can actualy even know of a neutrinos existence. We've gone from thinking an atom of matter is the smallest bit of matter in existence, to this, and beyond.

[derman]

Thanks guys, I was reading your comments and I missed the presentation about neutrinos. You are disturbing the whole class. Now I have to download this and watch it later.

[Goproflying]

@TheCaptainLulz It's not thier size which causes them to struggle to interact with matter, it's the fact that they do not interact strongly (via the strong force), so they don't "see" normal baryonic matter which is what most of the universe is made of (negating dark matter and energy). A neutrino flying through a planet is like a plane flying through a cloud...it doesn't matter if it's there or not.

[nozerty]

Although everyone else on youtube seems to hate it, I love seeing pages of debate in the comments section. It means that people are at least using their brains.

[ProfessorEGadd]

@fertilizerspike
The article was:

Air University Review, July-August 1984
Introducing the Particle-Beam Weapon

Dr. Richard M. Roberds


So where exactly are these systems in use? By who? For what purpose?
As far as I can tell it was experimented with in the cold war.

I don't follow the jump from 'studying high energy beams' to 'weapons lab'. Could you expand on that. What compelling evidence is there that they are doing anything more that studying?

[ProfessorEGadd]

@fertilizerspike
Well according to the article you showed me (admittedly 25 years old) such a targeting system is far beyond our current capability.
Incidentally, that article supports beam weapons but not that CERN is making them. My question was what makes you think that CERN is a weapons lab? Who says CERN is developing weapons technology?

Just to satisfy my curiosity, how do you explain behaviour usually attributed to the action of gravity? Apples falling and so on?

[AGrandt]

@Odium1981 I agree. Fundamental science research like CERN and Fermilab need the funds, there are not enough of these locations.

[michalchik]

Actually that is PET or SPECT scan's and they don't inject positrons, they inject isotopes like O15 that emit positrons and then detect the resulting gamma rays from the e- + e+ annihilation when the ejected positron hit an electron.

[stonetop]

@fertilizerspike any isotopes are produced in amounts of a few atoms at a time... and the more exotic atoms produced decay very quickly, far to quickly to be of use.

What weapons are they building there?

[ProfessorEGadd]

@fertilizerspike
Also: They are not just ramping up the power to see what happens. They have made observations which point towards a certain theory, but this theory requires the presence of other particles not yet detected. The are ramping up the power in order to find these particles, confirm their predictions and help validate their theory.

[Goproflying]

@fertilizerspike Weapons lab? care to explain?

[diwitdharpatitripathi]

Gorgeous. Gorgeously beautiful. No doubt, physics is the most beautiful thing in the universe

[stonetop]

@michalchik observation to confirm these predictions is very important in continuing experimentation. Those speculative hypothesis are extensions of theories like those verified here... without confirming the current theories it is rather difficult to determine which of the more speculative hypothesis' are reasonable.

[Quintinohthree]

I am constantly wondering, how can they aim that well? I mean the detectors are big, but not nearly as big as you'd think.

[michalchik]

@stonetop I am not saying it is not important, but the LHC is a very, very expensive tool, and I am still wondering what theories it is a good test of. The standard model already has the hell tested out of it while the GUT's and TOE's I have heard "don't know" are mostly beyond the energy range of the LHC,

[truvelocity]

@linkleisure Its the finding of the first visible Tau nutrition which is helping to prove that nutrinos oscillate into different states of behavior, or the 3 basic families of nutrinos, which are about 15 known nutrinos. They pass right through you as though you are not even there. Why do they want to know this? For future energy saving technologies and nano-technologies in which we can artificially repeat atomic behaviors for inventions to make our lives easier.

[AnnaLang]

@fertilizerspike "they were invented as a model to describe the behaviour of atoms being smashed together."
No, neutrinos are PRODUCED in particle interactions like fusion or decay mostly, They're not transmutation, we've discovered them. Also one source of neutrinos is the nuclear fusion of the sun and beta (-) decay..

[ProfessorEGadd]

@fertilizerspike
Finally the support is provided.
It seems to me that the main issues with developing the Beam weapons do not apply to CERN. Things like targeting and preventing the beam from diverging. These are not concerns for CERN so it will not advance the weapons.
Also the article describes anti-missile systems. Isn't that good?
You could argue that anything is pointless. People are studying quantum physics because it interests them, it amuses them. Therefore it is not pointless.

[stonetop]

@AnnaLang17 fertilizerspike is a Poe, and it's not worth the watts used to post to reply.

[hedonism]

I am proud to be amongst the few that understoof this video :D