MiniBooNE results suggest antineutrinos act differently

[drwayne]

Neutrinos, the ubiquitous daughters of the weak interaction, start their universe-traversing lives as one of three varieties: νe, νμ, or ντ. However, like ghosts with an identity crisis, these phantasmal particles find themselves constantly morphing from one variety to another, or oscillating, as they propagate on their long journeys.

Now the MiniBooNE experiment has found that antineutrinos, which should follow the same rules as neutrinos, might oscillate in a slightly different way. The results seem to favor a much-debated antineutrino result obtained by the Liquid Scintillator Neutrino Detector experiment in 1990.

Rest of the story:

http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/breakin ... fferently/

 

[csmyth3025]

As I understand it, when neutrino oscillation was confirmed the notion that neutrinos have a non-zero mass became a necessity. In this case they are no longer constrained to travel at c. Have researchers been able to devise any way to measure the velocity of neutrinos? Since they interact with matter so weakly, I would think this must be extremely difficult.

Chris

 

[kk434]

There was a theory that the neutrino and the antineutrino are the same particle and neutrinoless double beta decay process is possible. Those new results must then disprove this theory.