In a new study, researchers have taken an important step toward understanding how exploding stars can help reveal how neutrinos, mysterious subatomic particles, secretly interact with themselves.
rarely interact with normal matter, and instead travel invisibly through it at almost the speed of light. These ghostly particles outnumber all the atoms in the universe and are always passing harmlessly through our bodies, but due to their low mass and lack of an electric charge they can be incredibly difficult to find and study.
But by calculating how self-interactions would affect the neutrino signal from Supernova 1987A, the nearest supernova observed in, researchers found that when neutrinos do interact with themselves, they form a tightly coupled fluid that expands under relativistic hydrodynamics—a branch of physics that deals with how flows impact solid objects in one of two different ways.
One of the reasons it's so vital to understand these mechanisms is that if neutrinos are acting as a fluid, that means they are acting together, as a collective. And if the properties of neutrinos are different as a collective than individually, then the physics of supernovae could experience changes too. But whether these changes are due solely to the burst case or the outflow case remains to be seen.
Despite these uncertainties, the study is a huge milestone in answering the decades-old astrophysical issue of how neutrinos actually scatter when ejected from supernovae, said John Beacom, co-author of the study and a professor of physics and astronomy at Ohio State. This study found that in the burst case, unprecedented sensitivity to neutrino self-interactions is possible even with sparse neutrino data from SN 1987A and conservative analysis assumptions.
South Africa Latest News, South Africa Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
FDA: Avoid using Universal Meditech pregnancy, ovulation testsRECALL ALERT: A variety of products that test for pregnancy, ovulation, urinary tract infections and more, are being recalled. recall
Read more »
Using AI for glucose monitoring: a review of January AIA continuous glucose monitor helped me discover I have hypoglycemia. Here's how startup January uses AI to predict blood sugar spikes and crashes and coached me to better food choices.
Read more »
Big business is using the popular vote to bypass California lawCalifornia leads the nation in the number of ballot initiatives and the billions of dollars spent to sway voters or circumvent the Legislature.
Read more »
Former leaders of PA State Corrections Officers Assoc. accused of theft using credit cardsFive former leaders of the Pennsylvania State Corrections Officers Association are facing multiple theft charges, accused of improperly using a union credit card.
Read more »
FDA warns against using certain at-home pregnancy, ovulation, UTI testsThe FDA is warning not to use certain at-home pregnancy, ovulation and UTI tests manufactured by Universal Meditech Inc. because it can't confirm their performance.
Read more »