Comments on: MiniBooNE Neutrino Result – Guest Blog from Heather Ray

By: Dark Matter » MiniBooNE Neutrino Oscillation data - : Mostly consistent with the standard model

Thu, 24 May 2007 06:41:24 +0000

[...] The experiment started in 1997 and the results were announced today. For most of the neutrino energy range they looked at, they did not see any more electron neutrinos than would be predicted by the Standard Model. But at the lower energies, the scientists did see more electron neutrinos than predicted: 369, rather than the predicted 273! Also see an excellent blog by Heather Ray. [...]

By: HelloWorld

HelloWorld — Sat, 28 Apr 2007 11:57:28 +0000

Peace people

We love you

By: Susan, Heather's Momma

Susan, Heather's Momma — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 14:24:08 +0000

I was beyond proud when I read this, however, I was curious as to how many scientists would catch the relevance of the black and gold attire in the photo…I am even more proud to see many of you did!! The picture was taken 2/06 in Detriot at the Super Bowl.. Heather and I had built our first new house and actually spent the porch money to watch our beloved Steelers get one for the thumb!! Here we go Steelers, Here we go!!

By: Working Blind « Charm &c.

Working Blind « Charm &c. — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 04:02:04 +0000

[...] The MiniBooNE collaboration recently released initial results searching for muon neutrinos turning into electron neutrinos. A very nice and detailed discussion of the physics and experiment is here, and I won’t repeat it; instead I’m going to talk a bit about the kind of analysis they did â€” a “blind analysis.” [...]

By: Yvette

Yvette — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 07:33:38 +0000

How exciting! Go Stillers!

By: B

Sat, 14 Apr 2007 19:50:17 +0000

Hi Count,

to me it’s not clear – that’s why I was asking. There is a lot of talking about method one and method two and so on in that paper. I am not an expert on this, so I find it kind of confusing. I am just puzzled that if there are different methods at all, shouldn’t there be an errorbar on that cross-section? Esp. if there are so little data points in the relevant energy region? If that cross-section was somewhat different wouldn’t it affect the number of expected events (not sure if it would do the same to the background since I am not sure exactly what contributes to that background). Best,

By: Mustafa Mond, FCD

Mustafa Mond, FCD — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 15:26:19 +0000

Hence LSND and MiniBooNE are consistent if one accepts that neutrino mass scale depends on its energy as TGD strongly suggests. For details see the posting at my blog page.
Matti Pitkanen

Did I miss something? What does MiniBoonE have to do with Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion?

By: MiniBooNE Results are in « The Crackpot’s Mind

MiniBooNE Results are in « The Crackpot’s Mind — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 15:24:54 +0000

[...] I’m not a neutrino physicist, so I couldn’t give you very good information, but a blog entry by a guest writer for Cosmic Variance provides a pretty good description of what exactly is going on. Fascinating stuff, truly. 14 Apr 07 | Physics [...]

By: Gavin Polhemus

Gavin Polhemus — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 10:44:11 +0000

Niel B.

[If neutrinos] really aren’t going at the speed of light, but even a bit less, then their spin can’t be inherently left-handed. Why not? Because, a sufficiently fast-moving observer could be moving past them, and would see a neutrino’s spin going the wrong way relative to its velocity.

This is correct, so there must be a right handed version of the neutrino. There is: the anti-neutrino. When you reverse the direction of a neutrino it changes helicity, but it also changes to an anti-neutrino, so no new particle needs to be added to the standard model to account for neutrino masses.

Although somewhat academic, we should probably think of the neutrinos as their own antiparticles (i.e. they don’t get arrows in Feynman diagrams) and allow them to come in both right and left handed versions. (In technical language, we should think of them as real four component spinors rather than complex two component spinors). This doesn’t require a dramatic change in thinking. When you hear “neutrino” just think “left-handed neutrino” and when you hear anti-neutrino think “right-handed neutrino.” We all know that mass terms mix right-handed and left-handed, so there’s nothing to worry about. (Except for lepton number, which is no longer well defined. No matter. Lepton number isn’t conserved anyway once you add neutrino masses).

Gavin

By: Ellipsis

Ellipsis — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 08:01:59 +0000

How many more years of booster running would an antineutrino analysis of comparable sensitivity to the present MiniBooNE neutrino results take?

I.e. could you say a little about the cost/benefits of continuing at FNAL, vs. a new facility at SNS?