The Neutrino - An Elusive Beast Essay -- Exploratory Essays Research P

The Neutrino - An Elusive bruteAn infinite number of neutrinos shoot across the earths surface every second, radiated by distant stars, and yet it has taken up until the mid 20th ascorbic acid for any wizard to realize it. Finding neutrinos in your let backyard is easy. All you need is a ten-ton vat of pure water, 13000 photomultiplier tubes, and $11 million dollars in research funding. much on that later, but first, it would help to know a little much about what youre hunting. The neutrino is an elusive beast possessing neither mass nor charge. The only substantiation of its existence comes in measuring its recoil effect. In the cold affectionateness of subatomic physics, beyond the protons and neutrons that until recently served as the basic building staunch of atoms, a wellspring of subnuclear particles have been discovered in recent years. This much-theorized-upon neutrino is one of these particles. Research has discovered three types of neutrinos the electron neutrino, t he tau neutrino, and the negative muon neutrino. An anti-neutrino particle has in addition been discovered. All ar created as the result of particle putrefy.Neutrinos, born of decay, are given off as one particle deteriorates into a much stable state. Neutrinos are emitted in positron (another type of subnuclear particle) beta decay while the anti-neutrino is emitted from electron beta decay. As a pi-meson decays into a muon, the muon neutrino emerges along side the muon. When a pion decays, a apathetic particle must be emitted in the direction opposite that of the muon in order to conserve momentum. The original assumption was that this particle was the neutrino that conserve momentum in beta decay. In 1962, however, researchers proved that the neutrino accompanying pion decay is different. At t... ...r for the population at large-- make our teeth whiter and cereal grass flakes stay crunchy in milk -- or is this just science for sciences own sake. Whats the payback for loo king for neutrinos? Bah quips Super-K technician R.J. Wilkes, when asked if neutrino research is a big waste of time. He cites that the neutrino discoveries have opened new doors in astrophysics. Understanding neutrinos means a better understanding of nuclear reactions of stars, as in the explosion of SN1987A. works Cited Detection of the Free Neutrino A Confirmation, C.L. Cowan, Jr.,F. Reines, F.B. Harrison, H.W. Kruses and A.D. McGuire, Science 124, 103 (1956). 40 age of Neutrino Physics, Frederick Reines, Progress of Particle and Nuclear Physics, Vol. 32, 1 (1994). Websites The University of Washingtons Super Kariokande entropy Page UC Irvine Physics Department