2015 Nobel physicists figured neutrinos for chameleons! I had them pegged as neuts:-)

[Dingbat]

Which Anglos would not be able to understand the subject title or would find it unidiomatic? On to the news ...

The Nobel Prize in Physics 2015 recognises Takaaki Kajita in Japan and Arthur B. McDonald in Canada, for their key contributions to the experiments which demonstrated that neutrinos change identities.
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2015/press.html

[David Kleinecke]

Flawed. Reptiles versus Amphibians.

[pensive hamster]

They could be shape-shifting reptiles though ...

[Mark Brader]

We are asked "twice":

> Which Anglos would not be able to understand the subject title or would
> find it unidiomatic?

Well, it took me a while to figure out that by "neuts" you meant "newts",
that you considered them as something closely related to chameleons, and
that this was therefore supposed to be a pun. Other than that it was
comprehensible enough.
--
Mark Brader, Toronto | An actual human would feel guilt in this situation.
m...@vex.net | -- Scott Adams: Dilbert

My text in this article is in the public domain.

[Dingbat]

Which one is this?:-)

Salamander lizard brooch $10 http://tinyurl.com/salamanderlizard

[Will Parsons]

On Wednesday, 7 Oct 2015 3:54 PM -0400, Mark Brader wrote:
> We are asked "twice":
>> Which Anglos would not be able to understand the subject title or would
>> find it unidiomatic?
>
> Well, it took me a while to figure out that by "neuts" you meant "newts",
> that you considered them as something closely related to chameleons, and
> that this was therefore supposed to be a pun. Other than that it was
> comprehensible enough.

Was it really that hard? I comprehended immediately and thought it
quite witty. (I really can't imagine being distracted by any reptile
vs amphibian issue.)

--
Will

[Dingbat]

On Wednesday, October 7, 2015 at 3:54:03 PM UTC-4, Mark Brader wrote:
> We are asked "twice":

Thanks for replying to the 2nd one. I had deleted the 1st because I wanted to make a correction to the subject; I don't see it on Google Groups' web interface.

> > Which Anglos would not be able to understand the subject title or would
> > find it unidiomatic?
>
> Well, it took me a while to figure out that by "neuts" you meant "newts",
> that you considered them as something closely related to chameleons, and
> that this was therefore supposed to be a pun. Other than that it was
> comprehensible enough.

Do Canadians say "figured for" and "pegged as"?

> --
> Mark Brader, Toronto | An actual human would feel guilt in this situation.

[snide...@gmail.com]

On Wednesday, October 7, 2015 at 1:20:36 PM UTC-7, Dingbat wrote:
> On Wednesday, October 7, 2015 at 3:54:03 PM UTC-4, Mark Brader wrote:

> > We are asked "twice":
>
> Thanks for replying to the 2nd one. I had deleted the 1st because
> I wanted to make a correction to the subject; I don't see it on
> Google Groups' web interface.

Not all servers delete messages based on CANCEL requests,
so if your message has propagated, it may become seen.

>
> > > Which Anglos would not be able to understand the subject title or would
> > > find it unidiomatic?
> >
> > Well, it took me a while to figure out that by "neuts" you meant "newts",
> > that you considered them as something closely related to chameleons, and
> > that this was therefore supposed to be a pun. Other than that it was
> > comprehensible enough.
>
> Do Canadians say "figured for" and "pegged as"?

I'll let other speak for the Canadians, but "pegged as" is idiomatic
in my of the US (Left Coast). "Figured for" less so, but understandable.

/dps "glad we aren't talking about dragons, Fafner doesn't sound cuddly"

[Peter T. Daniels]

Brader is a very special boy.

[Peter Moylan]

I was whooshed by it. To be frank, I still remain unclear about why
those physicists received the prize, and news reports have been most
unhelpful. (Scientific topics are almost always misreported, presumably
because there aren't enough journalists who understand the science.) Did
they discover that there are two kinds of neutrinos, that can
spontaneously change into each other? And if so, how did they get from
there to calculating the mass? I guess I'd better go googling when I
have the time.

--
Peter Moylan http://www.pmoylan.org
Newcastle, NSW, Australia

[Richard Tobin]

In article <764cd26d-779e-413e...@googlegroups.com>,

Peter T. Daniels <gram...@verizon.net> wrote:
>Brader is a very special boy.

Are you nasty just for the fun of it?

-- Richard

[snide...@gmail.com]

On Wednesday, October 7, 2015 at 3:07:05 PM UTC-7, Peter Moylan wrote:

> Did
> they discover that there are two kinds of neutrinos, that can
> spontaneously change into each other? And if so, how did they get from
> there to calculating the mass? I guess I'd better go googling when I
> have the time.

There are 3 kinds. Neutrinos spontaneously change kind some small percentage
of the time. The distance from the sun to the earth is large enough
that measuring the bucket size for each kind gives a different number
than you'd expect based on the reactions in the sun.
The announcement is recent enough that I haven't figured out
if the honorees are the theoreticians who predicted this
or the experimentalists who measured it,
or some of each.

(I'm still on the biology award announcement)

Since the Nobel Prize committee takes their time in evaluating the importance
of a discovery or invention, the news on the neturino experiments has cooled a bit,
having reached its peak 5-10 years ago.

/Scientific American/ described the experiments in some detail,
although I would need to sit around for a while in the back issue department
to tell you when. Phys.org and sciencedaily.com probably covered it,
and there's a good chance some of the papers were in /Nature/.

/dps

[Jerry Friedman]

On Wednesday, October 7, 2015 at 4:42:55 PM UTC-6, snide...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Wednesday, October 7, 2015 at 3:07:05 PM UTC-7, Peter Moylan wrote:
>
> > Did
> > they discover that there are two kinds of neutrinos, that can
> > spontaneously change into each other? And if so, how did they get from
> > there to calculating the mass?

the coupling between the three "flavor eigenstates" is related to the
masses. I'm supposed to use the phrase "mixing angle" at this point, but
ask Jan.

> > I guess I'd better go googling when I
> > have the time.

Or that.

> There are 3 kinds. Neutrinos spontaneously change kind some small percentage
> of the time. The distance from the sun to the earth is large enough
> that measuring the bucket size for each kind gives a different number
> than you'd expect based on the reactions in the sun.

It seems that the change is more likely to happen in matter, such as the
sun or the Earth.

> The announcement is recent enough that I haven't figured out
> if the honorees are the theoreticians who predicted this
> or the experimentalists who measured it,
> or some of each.

The directors of the quite sizable experimental projects that confirmed
the well-founded theoretical hypothesis.

I'm pleased on purely verbal grounds to see that McDonald left Princeton
for Kingston.

--
Jerry Friedman

[Mark Brader]

Jerry Friedman:

> I'm pleased on purely verbal grounds to see that McDonald left Princeton
> for Kingston.

But what comes after that? Emperorston?
--
Mark Brader "Metal urgy. The urge to use metals.
Toronto That was humans, all right."
m...@vex.net -- Terry Pratchett: Truckers

[Peter T. Daniels]

Only to those who have earned it.

[Dr. HotSalt]

On Wednesday, October 7, 2015 at 11:08:26 AM UTC-7, Dingbat wrote:

> Which Anglos would not be able to understand the subject title or would find
> it unidiomatic?

Puns aren't idioms, but who's counting?

> On to the news ...
>
> The Nobel Prize in Physics 2015 recognises Takaaki Kajita in Japan and Arthur
> B. McDonald in Canada, for their key contributions to the experiments which
> demonstrated that neutrinos change identities.
> http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2015/press.html

I was thinking 'Striune bearded dragons.


Dr. HotSalt

[J. J. Lodder]

<snide...@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Wednesday, October 7, 2015 at 3:07:05 PM UTC-7, Peter Moylan wrote:
>
> > Did
> > they discover that there are two kinds of neutrinos, that can
> > spontaneously change into each other? And if so, how did they get from
> > there to calculating the mass? I guess I'd better go googling when I
> > have the time.
>
> There are 3 kinds. Neutrinos spontaneously change kind some small percentage
> of the time. The distance from the sun to the earth is large enough
> that measuring the bucket size for each kind gives a different number
> than you'd expect based on the reactions in the sun.
> The announcement is recent enough that I haven't figured out
> if the honorees are the theoreticians who predicted this
> or the experimentalists who measured it,
> or some of each.

It's been very much an experimentalist's thing all along.
Theoreticians would have preferred
to have the neutrino masses at exactly zero,
for that makes it all much easier.

There is still no theory that can predict neutrino masses
from first principles,

Jan

[Jerry Friedman]

So it's not true that Pontecorvo developed a way of describing neutrino
oscillations in the '50s and '60s before there was any evidence from the
Homestake experiment?

> There is still no theory that can predict neutrino masses
> from first principles,

A statement one could make about many other particle properties.

--
Jerry Friedman

[quia...@yahoo.com]

On Wed, 07 Oct 2015 19:58:16 -0500, m...@vex.net (Mark Brader) wrote:

>Jerry Friedman:
>> I'm pleased on purely verbal grounds to see that McDonald left Princeton
>> for Kingston.
>
>But what comes after that? Emperorston?

Or Empiristan.

--
John

[J. J. Lodder]

Jerry Friedman <jerry_f...@yahoo.com> wrote:

> On 10/8/15 5:29 AM, J. J. Lodder wrote:
> > <snide...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> On Wednesday, October 7, 2015 at 3:07:05 PM UTC-7, Peter Moylan wrote:
> >>
> >>> Did
> >>> they discover that there are two kinds of neutrinos, that can
> >>> spontaneously change into each other? And if so, how did they get from
> >>> there to calculating the mass? I guess I'd better go googling when I
> >>> have the time.
> >>
> >> There are 3 kinds. Neutrinos spontaneously change kind some small
> >> percentage of the time. The distance from the sun to the earth is
> >> large enough that measuring the bucket size for each kind gives a
> >> different number than you'd expect based on the reactions in the sun.
> >> The announcement is recent enough that I haven't figured out if the
> >> honorees are the theoreticians who predicted this or the
> >> experimentalists who measured it, or some of each.
> >
> > It's been very much an experimentalist's thing all along.
> > Theoreticians would have preferred
> > to have the neutrino masses at exactly zero,
> > for that makes it all much easier.
>
> So it's not true that Pontecorvo developed a way of describing neutrino
> oscillations in the '50s and '60s before there was any evidence from the
> Homestake experiment?

Yes, but did he produce any numbers?
Some non-trivial prediction that could be verified or falsified?
Neutrino masses by themselves are much older than Pontecorvo,
and go all the way back to Dirac and Majorana.
As for oscillations,
that is a trivial application of linear superposition,
and you can go all the way back to Schroedinger for that.
So I don't think P. would have qualified,
apart from the minor practicality of him being dead.

> > There is still no theory that can predict neutrino masses
> > from first principles,
>
> A statement one could make about many other particle properties.

Yes.
My orignal posting had
(or any other standard model mass for that mattter)
here.

I deleted it, as unsuitable for alt.usage.english,

Jan

[J. J. Lodder]

Mark Brader <m...@vex.net> wrote:

> Jerry Friedman:
> > I'm pleased on purely verbal grounds to see that McDonald left Princeton
> > for Kingston.
>
> But what comes after that? Emperorston?

Of course not, next is Godston,

Jan

[Dingbat]

On Wednesday, October 7, 2015 at 7:25:36 PM UTC-4, Jerry Friedman wrote:
> I'm pleased on purely verbal grounds to see that McDonald left Princeton
> for Kingston.
>

The Canadians are pleased on nationalist grounds but he did it to be near the nickel mine that was venue of the experiment, and possibly to save on heavy water by getting it from the Canadian government,
... but it was another physicist who deduced the utility of heavy water in an acrylic tank, a Princeton alumnus with a Chinese name,
... and it was Ray Davis who first descended into a (gold) mine to study neutrinos.

[Jerry Friedman]

I wasn't arguing that Pontecorvo (would have) deserved the Nobel
Prize. I was disagreeing with your statement (if you'll forgive me
for casting it as prose), "It's been very much an experimentalist's

thing all along. Theoreticians would have preferred to have the
neutrino masses at exactly zero, for that makes it all much easier."

It seems Dirac, Majorana, and Pontecorvo weren't that uncomfortable
with neutrino masses.

> > A statement one could make about many other particle properties.
>
> Yes.
> My orignal posting had
> (or any other standard model mass for that mattter)
> here.
>
> I deleted it, as unsuitable for alt.usage.english,

I wouldn't have deleted it, but I'm probably not the best judge.

--
Jerry Friedman

[Charles Bishop]

In article <1mbzk3j.15p...@de-ster.xs4all.nl>,

Then Doctorston?

--
charles, old joke

[J. J. Lodder]

They were not uncomfortable with it,
but they did not formulate the original standard model.
(with zero neutrino masses)
At the time there was no convincing evidence
for non-zero neutrino masses,
so theoretical prejudice prevailed.

> > > A statement one could make about many other particle properties.
> >
> > Yes.
> > My orignal posting had
> > (or any other standard model mass for that mattter)
> > here.
> >
> > I deleted it, as unsuitable for alt.usage.english,
>
> I wouldn't have deleted it, but I'm probably not the best judge.

It is but a part of the larger issue of the far too many
free parameters of the standard model.
This already started way back in the 1920s, with alpha,
and there has been no real progress since.

Jan

--
"Warum 137?" (Wolfgang Pauli)

[Oliver Cromm]

* Peter Moylan:

As I understood it, they proved that one kind of neutrinos does
indeed change into another. The theory says this is only possible
if their masses are different. Therefore, at least one of the
masses must be different from zero.

--
A computer will do what you tell it to do, but that may be much
different from what you had in mind. - Joseph Weizenbaum

[Jerry Friedman]

I imagine the prejudice included a preference for fewer free
parameters--but it was not to be.

>>>> A statement one could make about many other particle properties.
>>>
>>> Yes.
>>> My orignal posting had
>>> (or any other standard model mass for that mattter)
>>> here.
>>>
>>> I deleted it, as unsuitable for alt.usage.english,
>>
>> I wouldn't have deleted it, but I'm probably not the best judge.
>
> It is but a part of the larger issue of the far too many
> free parameters of the standard model.
> This already started way back in the 1920s, with alpha,
> and there has been no real progress since.

Glad to have my understanding confirmed by someone more knowledgeable.

--
Jerry Friedman

[J. J. Lodder]

Nono, nothing goes above god, not even a pilot.

What is a Godstone?

Jan

[Charles Bishop]

In article <1mc0plt.1bi...@de-ster.xs4all.nl>,

nos...@de-ster.demon.nl (J. J. Lodder) wrote:

> Charles Bishop <ctbi...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>
> > In article <1mbzk3j.15p...@de-ster.xs4all.nl>,
> > nos...@de-ster.demon.nl (J. J. Lodder) wrote:
> >
> > > Mark Brader <m...@vex.net> wrote:
> > >
> > > > Jerry Friedman:
> > > > > I'm pleased on purely verbal grounds to see that McDonald left
> > > > > Princeton
> > > > > for Kingston.
> > > >
> > > > But what comes after that? Emperorston?
> > >
> > > Of course not, next is Godston,
> > >
> > > Jan
> >
> > Then Doctorston?
>
> Nono, nothing goes above god, not even a pilot.
>
> What is a Godstone?

Ooooommmmmm?


--
charles

[Peter Moylan]

On 2015-Oct-08 22:29, J. J. Lodder wrote:

> It's been very much an experimentalist's thing all along.
> Theoreticians would have preferred
> to have the neutrino masses at exactly zero,
> for that makes it all much easier.

I thought it had been known for donkey's ages that the mass is zero iff
the neutrino travels at the speed of light; and known more recently that
neutrinos travel at less than the speed of light.

[Peter Moylan]

On 2015-Oct-10 05:25, Oliver Cromm wrote:
> * Peter Moylan:

>> I was whooshed by it. To be frank, I still remain unclear about why
>> those physicists received the prize, and news reports have been most
>> unhelpful. (Scientific topics are almost always misreported, presumably
>> because there aren't enough journalists who understand the science.) Did
>> they discover that there are two kinds of neutrinos, that can
>> spontaneously change into each other? And if so, how did they get from
>> there to calculating the mass? I guess I'd better go googling when I
>> have the time.
>
> As I understood it, they proved that one kind of neutrinos does
> indeed change into another. The theory says this is only possible
> if their masses are different. Therefore, at least one of the
> masses must be different from zero.

Aha! That's the connection I didn't discover by googling. Googling did
remind me that I once knew there are three kinds of neutrinos, but that
had slipped out of my mind. (Even if I had remembered it, the news
reports gave the impression of a discovery that there are two kinds of
electron neutrino, which I now see is wrong.) I didn't know about the
masses having to be different.

If this is just a confirmation of existing theory, I'm not convinced
that it deserves a Nobel prize. Developing a theory required a much
greater leap of imagination than confirming it.

[the Omrud]

On 15/10/2015 06:59, Peter Moylan wrote:
> On 2015-Oct-08 22:29, J. J. Lodder wrote:
>
>> It's been very much an experimentalist's thing all along.
>> Theoreticians would have preferred
>> to have the neutrino masses at exactly zero,
>> for that makes it all much easier.
>
> I thought it had been known for donkey's ages that the mass is zero iff
> the neutrino travels at the speed of light; and known more recently that
> neutrinos travel at less than the speed of light.

Eek. I know the mass is very low, but with all that velocity (C minus
<a small amount>) they sound quite dangerous. I'm going to be dodging
neutrinos all day.

--
David

[Snidely]

On Thursday, the Omrud yelped out that:

They don't find you any more attractive than they find me.

/dps "I've had dates like that"

--
Trust, but verify.

[J. J. Lodder]

It is kind of heroic experimental physics,
and the inventors of neutrino mass have been long dead,

Jan

[J. J. Lodder]

Peter Moylan <pe...@pmoylan.org.invalid> wrote:

> On 2015-Oct-08 22:29, J. J. Lodder wrote:
>
> > It's been very much an experimentalist's thing all along.
> > Theoreticians would have preferred
> > to have the neutrino masses at exactly zero,
> > for that makes it all much easier.
>
> I thought it had been known for donkey's ages that the mass is zero iff
> the neutrino travels at the speed of light; and known more recently that
> neutrinos travel at less than the speed of light.

Not through measurement of a speed.
Even over intergalactic distances
(supernova Sanduleak, 1987A, @ 178,000 lj)
there wass no measurable difference
in time of flight of light and neutrinos,

Jan

[J. J. Lodder]

Do you also run to dodge the raindrops?

Jan

[Richard Tobin]

In article <mvnf7n$jvr$2...@dont-email.me>,

Peter Moylan <pe...@pmoylan.org.invalid> wrote:

>I thought it had been known for donkey's ages that the mass is zero iff
>the neutrino travels at the speed of light;

More generally, nothing with (rest) mass can be accelerated to the
speed of light - it would have infinite energy. But what are the
possible speeds for something with no rest mass? If they have
non-zero kinetic energy they must be travelling at the speed of light,
but what if their kinetic energy is zero? Can they have any speed
less than that of light?

-- Richard

[J. J. Lodder]

No, massless particles with energy zero don't exist.
They would have infinite wavelength,
so the universe is too small to contain any,

Jan

[Dr. HotSalt]

On Wednesday, October 14, 2015 at 11:10:08 PM UTC-7, Peter Moylan wrote:
> On 2015-Oct-10 05:25, Oliver Cromm wrote:
> > * Peter Moylan:
>
> >> I was whooshed by it. To be frank, I still remain unclear about why
> >> those physicists received the prize, and news reports have been most
> >> unhelpful. (Scientific topics are almost always misreported, presumably
> >> because there aren't enough journalists who understand the science.) Did
> >> they discover that there are two kinds of neutrinos,

We (well, some of us) already knew that there are at least (and probably only) three different kinds of neutrinos.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_(particle_physics)#Fourth_generation

> >> that can
> >> spontaneously change into each other? And if so, how did they get from
> >> there to calculating the mass? I guess I'd better go googling when I
> >> have the time.
> >
> > As I understood it, they proved that one kind of neutrinos does
> > indeed change into another. The theory says this is only possible
> > if their masses are different. Therefore, at least one of the
> > masses must be different from zero.
>
> Aha! That's the connection I didn't discover by googling. Googling did
> remind me that I once knew there are three kinds of neutrinos, but that
> had slipped out of my mind. (Even if I had remembered it, the news
> reports gave the impression of a discovery that there are two kinds of
> electron neutrino, which I now see is wrong.) I didn't know about the
> masses having to be different.

The Standard Model says they should all have zero mass.

> If this is just a confirmation of existing theory, I'm not convinced
> that it deserves a Nobel prize. Developing a theory required a much
> greater leap of imagination than confirming it.

No, you miss the point; making up scientific theories is almost indistinguishable from philosophy. Consider string theory- it's elegant as all hell mathematically, explains damned near everything, and predicts all sorts of wonderful things. Trouble is that we have no idea how to go about testing it against the real world- it makes the same predictions that the Standard Model does at the energies we can reach. (Worse, string theory is actually a whole slew of theories that make slightly different predictions at energies just out of our reach, and we can't tell which one to try to test for.)

Demonstrating that neutrino oscillations occur is tantamount to falsifying the Standard Model of particle physics (proving that it is wrong, or "false").

It's like falsifying anything considered really fundamental in the sciences, like say the periodic table of elements.

So yeah, it's worth the Nobel.


Dr. HotSalt

[J. J. Lodder]

Not really. Zero neutrino masses
isn't a prediction of the Standard Model,
it is input into the Standard Model.
In other words, the Standard Model was constructed that way.

> > If this is just a confirmation of existing theory, I'm not convinced
> > that it deserves a Nobel prize. Developing a theory required a much
> > greater leap of imagination than confirming it.
>
> No, you miss the point; making up scientific theories is almost
> indistinguishable from philosophy. Consider string theory- it's elegant
> as all hell mathematically, explains damned near everything, and
> predicts all sorts of wonderful things. Trouble is that we have no idea
> how to go about testing it against the real world- it makes the same
> predictions that the Standard Model does at the energies we can reach.
> (Worse, string theory is actually a whole slew of theories that make
> slightly different predictions at energies just out of our reach, and we
> can't tell which one to try to test for.)

Again, not really. The Standard Model is input for all string theories.
You really should keep track of what goes in and what comes out.

> Demonstrating that neutrino oscillations occur is tantamount to
> falsifying the Standard Model of particle physics (proving that it is
> wrong, or "false").

Neither.
Neutrino oscillations show that the Standard Model needs to be enlarged.
(with some more free parameters)

> It's like falsifying anything considered really fundamental in the
> sciences, like say the periodic table of elements.

That is indeed somewhat analogous.
Discovering a new element does not falsify the periodic table,
or anything else for that matter.
It merely adds another element.

> So yeah, it's worth the Nobel.

Sure. Mainly because it is such a tour de force, experimentally,

Jan

[Jerry Friedman]

...

I don't think the energies are "just out of our reach". I think they're
out of our reach for generations, barring an experimental breakthrough.
But I'll be glad to be corrected.

If there's any experimental confirmation of string theory by some
unknown means within the inventors' lifetimes, they'll certainly get
the Nobel Prize.

--
Jerry Friedman
li

[Charles Bishop]

In article <mvnfs0$nrj$1...@dont-email.me>,

Peter Moylan <pe...@pmoylan.org.invalid> wrote:

> On 2015-Oct-10 05:25, Oliver Cromm wrote:
> > * Peter Moylan:
>
> >> I was whooshed by it. To be frank, I still remain unclear about why
> >> those physicists received the prize, and news reports have been most
> >> unhelpful. (Scientific topics are almost always misreported, presumably
> >> because there aren't enough journalists who understand the science.) Did
> >> they discover that there are two kinds of neutrinos, that can
> >> spontaneously change into each other? And if so, how did they get from
> >> there to calculating the mass? I guess I'd better go googling when I
> >> have the time.
> >
> > As I understood it, they proved that one kind of neutrinos does
> > indeed change into another. The theory says this is only possible
> > if their masses are different. Therefore, at least one of the
> > masses must be different from zero.
>
> Aha! That's the connection I didn't discover by googling. Googling did
> remind me that I once knew there are three kinds of neutrinos, but that
> had slipped out of my mind. (Even if I had remembered it, the news
> reports gave the impression of a discovery that there are two kinds of
> electron neutrino, which I now see is wrong.) I didn't know about the
> masses having to be different.

<cough> The Big Bang Theory has "bits" that are inserted when the show
comes back from commercial and when the scene shifts. They show a
"planetary model" of a low atomic number atom with the electron orbiting
the nucleus, sorta. The design of this has changed with the show's
seasons and now, I think the "proton" or "neutron" is shown with
boundaries on it. I thought it might be showing that the proton (or
neutron) is composed of other particles, neutrinos.

Any chance I'm near the explanation, or is it just "art" made for the
show?

>
> If this is just a confirmation of existing theory, I'm not convinced
> that it deserves a Nobel prize. Developing a theory required a much
> greater leap of imagination than confirming it.

--

charless

[J. J. Lodder]

Just 'art',

Jan

[J. J. Lodder]

String theory has also failed to retrodict the Standard Model.

> If there's any experimental confirmation of string theory by some
> unknown means within the inventors' lifetimes, they'll certainly get
> the Nobel Prize.

String theory is a complete failure, so far.
None of the aims of the original program have beeen realised.
On the contrary, revisionism is now the rule,
as is denialism with respect to the original aims.

Some prominent string theorists even say things like:
The idea od selecting the right theory
on basis of mathematical elegance and beauty was a mistake,
ugly theories are good, the idea of predictimg fundaental constants
was a mistake too, their values are random,
and are selected from some muliverse by the anthropic principle.

Lakatos would have called it a degenerating research program.
Most of it is adressing problems generated by the program itself.

But of course, one never knows
someone may still salvage something from the wreck,
or perhaps make it work after all,
but little hope remains,

Jan

[Mark Brader]

Charles Bishop:

> I thought it might be showing that the proton (or
> neutron) is composed of other particles, neutrinos.

I don't know about artistic diagrams on "The Big Bang Theory", but
neutrinos aren't constituent particles of protons or neutrons; they
get created when one turns into the other. The particles that
protons and neutrons are composed of are quarks.
--
Mark Brader, Toronto "But I want credit for all the words
m...@vex.net I spelled *right*!" -- BEETLE BAILEY

[Charles Bishop]

In article <JMmdnaJiH6H3Ub3L...@vex.net>,

m...@vex.net (Mark Brader) wrote:

> Charles Bishop:
> > I thought it might be showing that the proton (or
> > neutron) is composed of other particles, neutrinos.
>
> I don't know about artistic diagrams on "The Big Bang Theory", but
> neutrinos aren't constituent particles of protons or neutrons; they
> get created when one turns into the other. The particles that
> protons and neutrons are composed of are quarks.

Yes, I misspoke since I knew it was quarks, but was posting while tired.
So, where I wrote neutrinos in the other post, substitute quarks. I
think the "protons" in the illustrations show three "quarks".

I looked for an illustration, but a quick Google didn't turn up anything
useful.

--
charles

[Athel Cornish-Bowden]

Me neither, but on the whole the Nobel Prize committees (and everyone
else who decides the value of research) have always been more impressed
by experiments, however confirmatory, than by ideas, however brilliant
and revolutionary.

--
athel

[Dr. HotSalt]

All particle masses are input to the model by hand.

There were good reasons to think neutrinos should be massless. The most prominent was that none had ever been seen to be right-handed, which eliminated both of the theoretical ways to describe particles; the Weyl and Dirac equations. Finding right-handed neutrinos would save the Standard Model, of course). If that is shown not to be possible, Majorana may provide relief, but at the price of adding yet another "sterile" neutrino to look for, plus making neutrinos not actual fermions as such (or bosons for that matter) but members of another class of particle entirely, the anyon.

> > > If this is just a confirmation of existing theory, I'm not convinced
> > > that it deserves a Nobel prize. Developing a theory required a much
> > > greater leap of imagination than confirming it.
> >
> > No, you miss the point; making up scientific theories is almost
> > indistinguishable from philosophy. Consider string theory- it's elegant
> > as all hell mathematically, explains damned near everything, and
> > predicts all sorts of wonderful things. Trouble is that we have no idea
> > how to go about testing it against the real world- it makes the same
> > predictions that the Standard Model does at the energies we can reach.
> > (Worse, string theory is actually a whole slew of theories that make
> > slightly different predictions at energies just out of our reach, and we
> > can't tell which one to try to test for.)
>
> Again, not really. The Standard Model is input for all string theories.
> You really should keep track of what goes in and what comes out.

I am aware of what is derived from what, but my point was that string theory is fundamentally different from the Standard Model in that the former is untestable, a characteristic it shares with philosophies.

> > Demonstrating that neutrino oscillations occur is tantamount to
> > falsifying the Standard Model of particle physics (proving that it is
> > wrong, or "false").
>
> Neither.
> Neutrino oscillations show that the Standard Model needs to be enlarged.
> (with some more free parameters)

Sigh. We're trying to discuss particle physics in English.

> > It's like falsifying anything considered really fundamental in the
> > sciences, like say the periodic table of elements.
>
> That is indeed somewhat analogous.
> Discovering a new element does not falsify the periodic table,
> or anything else for that matter.
> It merely adds another element.

No, that's not what I meant. We are all made aware that atoms are slowly being added to it when Russian and American scientists argue about who gets to name one when its existence is confirmed. Seaborgium, Mendelevium, and so forth.

To falsify the periodic table, we would need to find out that its fundamental structural concept (the periodic recurrence of similarity of chemical properties with certain integer increases in proton content) is just not an accurate way of describing what happens.

The Standard Model makes certain assumptions derived from observation; that particles can be grouped according to their spins into fermions and bosons, that there are three "families" of leptons, and so on.

Neutrinos have always been an oddity. They were the only fermions never seen to have (within the limits of experimental error) mass, they only seem to come in one kind of handedness, and have other characteristics that are uncharacteristic of fermions even though we were sure they had half-integer spin.

Demonstrating that they have mass (even though we don't know what their masses are, only the difference between the squares of their mass eigenstates, by the way) shows that the Standard Model's rigid either/or partitioning of particles into bosons and fermions is just not an adequate description of reality.

If a new class of particles has to be added to it, it would be analogous to having to rearrange or add another layer to the periodic table.

> > So yeah, it's worth the Nobel.
>
> Sure. Mainly because it is such a tour de force, experimentally,

Yes, such a specific, unambiguous, groundbreaking tour de force.


Dr. HotSalt

[Joe Fineman]

Peter Moylan <pe...@pmoylan.org.invalid> writes:

> If this is just a confirmation of existing theory, I'm not convinced
> that it deserves a Nobel prize. Developing a theory required a much
> greater leap of imagination than confirming it.

Getting rid of a 50-year-old embarrassment (the solar-neutrino problem)
is surely to be commended & appreciated, even if it doesn't count as a
leap of imagination.
--
--- Joe Fineman jo...@verizon.net

||: Liberty subverts equality & fraternity, because its costs :||
||: are largely borne by the weak. :||

[Jerry Friedman]

Not necessarily--confirming a theory may require new experimental
techniques that no one had imagined before.

> Me neither, but on the whole the Nobel Prize committees (and everyone
> else who decides the value of research) have always been more impressed
> by experiments, however confirmatory, than by ideas, however brilliant
> and revolutionary.

I know of one example in physics--the 1978 prize for the discovery of
the cosmic background radiation--but can't think of others. Maybe
waiting so long after the prize for discovering superfluid helium-3
to give Tony Leggett a prize for predicting many of its properties?

Are there examples in other fields?

--
Jerry Friedman

[Peter Moylan]

On 2015-Oct-17 05:58, Dr. HotSalt wrote:

> If a new class of particles has to be added to it, it would be analogous to having to rearrange or add another layer to the periodic table.

The periodic table goes funny from atomic number 57 anyway. Doesn't this
amount to a new layer?

(I concede that this has nothing to do with neutrinos.)

[Jerry Friedman]

I agree. And as far as I remember from grad school in the '80s,
physicists understood that that meant there was nothing fundamental
about the choice of zero for the neutrino masses, only Ockham's Razor at
best, and there would be nothing surprising about small non-zero
neutrino masses.

> There were good reasons to think neutrinos should be massless. The most prominent was that none had ever been seen to be right-handed, which eliminated both of the theoretical ways to describe particles; the Weyl and Dirac equations.

I don't think there was any expectation of finding right-handed
neutrinos, since only the left-handed component couples to the weak
interaction.

> Finding right-handed neutrinos would save the Standard Model, of course).

It's not in any danger on this point, unless someone found a /lot/ of
right-handed neutrinos. I think the Standard Model would have some
trouble with that.

> If that is shown not to be possible, Majorana may provide relief, but at the price of adding yet another "sterile" neutrino to look for, plus making neutrinos not actual fermions as such (or bosons for that matter) but members of another class of particle entirely, the anyon.

I don't think so. Majorana particles would be new and interesting, but
they're fermions, not anyons.

>>>> If this is just a confirmation of existing theory, I'm not convinced
>>>> that it deserves a Nobel prize. Developing a theory required a much
>>>> greater leap of imagination than confirming it.
>>>
>>> No, you miss the point; making up scientific theories is almost
>>> indistinguishable from philosophy. Consider string theory- it's elegant
>>> as all hell mathematically, explains damned near everything, and
>>> predicts all sorts of wonderful things. Trouble is that we have no idea
>>> how to go about testing it against the real world- it makes the same
>>> predictions that the Standard Model does at the energies we can reach.
>>> (Worse, string theory is actually a whole slew of theories that make
>>> slightly different predictions at energies just out of our reach, and we
>>> can't tell which one to try to test for.)
>>
>> Again, not really. The Standard Model is input for all string theories.
>> You really should keep track of what goes in and what comes out.
>
> I am aware of what is derived from what, but my point was that string theory is fundamentally different from the Standard Model in that the former is untestable, a characteristic it shares with philosophies.

Untestable so far, but testable in principle.

>>> Demonstrating that neutrino oscillations occur is tantamount to
>>> falsifying the Standard Model of particle physics (proving that it is
>>> wrong, or "false").
>>
>> Neither.
>> Neutrino oscillations show that the Standard Model needs to be enlarged.
>> (with some more free parameters)
>
> Sigh. We're trying to discuss particle physics in English.
>
>>> It's like falsifying anything considered really fundamental in the
>>> sciences, like say the periodic table of elements.
>>
>> That is indeed somewhat analogous.
>> Discovering a new element does not falsify the periodic table,
>> or anything else for that matter.
>> It merely adds another element.
>
> No, that's not what I meant. We are all made aware that atoms are slowly being added to it when Russian and American scientists argue about who gets to name one when its existence is confirmed. Seaborgium, Mendelevium, and so forth.
>
> To falsify the periodic table, we would need to find out that its fundamental structural concept (the periodic recurrence of similarity of chemical properties with certain integer increases in proton content) is just not an accurate way of describing what happens.
>
> The Standard Model makes certain assumptions derived from observation; that particles can be grouped according to their spins into fermions and bosons, that there are three "families" of leptons, and so on.
>
> Neutrinos have always been an oddity. They were the only fermions never seen to have (within the limits of experimental error) mass,

So since it was proved that they have masses, they're known to be less odd.

> they only seem to come in one kind of handedness, and have other characteristics that are uncharacteristic of fermions even though we were sure they had half-integer spin.

As I recall, the handedness thing is because they're produced by the
weak interaction, which doesn't conserve parity.

> Demonstrating that they have mass (even though we don't know what their masses are, only the difference between the squares of their mass eigenstates, by the way) shows that the Standard Model's rigid either/or partitioning of particles into bosons and fermions is just not an adequate description of reality.

I don't believe that in the slightest. Neutrinos with mass might be
fermions just like any others.

> If a new class of particles has to be added to it, it would be analogous to having to rearrange or add another layer to the periodic table.
>
>>> So yeah, it's worth the Nobel.
>>
>> Sure. Mainly because it is such a tour de force, experimentally,
>
> Yes, such a specific, unambiguous, groundbreaking tour de force.

It's very impressive, but the results didn't surprise anyone.

--
Jerry Friedman

[Jerry Friedman]

On 10/16/15 3:18 PM, Joe Fineman wrote:
> Peter Moylan <pe...@pmoylan.org.invalid> writes:
>
>> If this is just a confirmation of existing theory, I'm not convinced
>> that it deserves a Nobel prize. Developing a theory required a much
>> greater leap of imagination than confirming it.
>
> Getting rid of a 50-year-old embarrassment (the solar-neutrino problem)
> is surely to be commended & appreciated, even if it doesn't count as a
> leap of imagination.

A nit: the embarrassment was more like thirty years old at the time that
Super-Kamiokande and SNO got rid of it.

--
Jerry Friedman

[Jerry Friedman]

On 10/7/15 12:08 PM, Dingbat wrote:
> Which Anglos would not be able to understand the subject title or would find it unidiomatic? On to the news ...
>
> The Nobel Prize in Physics 2015 recognises Takaaki Kajita in Japan and Arthur B. McDonald in Canada, for their key contributions to the experiments which demonstrated that neutrinos change identities.
> http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2015/press.html

If there's still any interest in the original question, in my idea of
American English "figured A for B" has a strong suggestion that the
person made an error (and may well know better now). I'd have to say
"figured out that neutrinos were chameleons", or more likely, "found
out" or "showed" or "proved".

--
Jerry Friedman

[Dingbat]

Thank you! Which of the following looks more correct? I think the former, if I didn't do any figuring (calculating, analysis, etc). Or does figuring not necessarily involve these?

2015 Nobel physicists found neutrinos are chameleons! I had 'em pegged as neuts:-)

2015 Nobel physicists found neutrinos are chameleons! I had 'em figured for neuts:-)

[the Omrud]

No, I find raindrops quite benign.

--
David

[Peter Moylan]

ObNavi: Raindrops, unlike glasses of whisky, do not run right through you.

[J. J. Lodder]

The most notorious example was the 1919 physics prize,
given to some experimentalist nobody (to his own great surprise)
for the achievement of his name not being Albert Einstein,

Jan

[J. J. Lodder]

Joe Fineman <jo...@verizon.net> wrote:

> Peter Moylan <pe...@pmoylan.org.invalid> writes:
>
> > If this is just a confirmation of existing theory, I'm not convinced
> > that it deserves a Nobel prize. Developing a theory required a much
> > greater leap of imagination than confirming it.
>
> Getting rid of a 50-year-old embarrassment (the solar-neutrino problem)
> is surely to be commended & appreciated, even if it doesn't count as a
> leap of imagination.

To be fair, they have done more than that,
like being the first to detect supenova neutrinos.

They went boldly where none had gone before,

Jan

[Richard Tobin]

In article <1mcfp7o.c3...@de-ster.xs4all.nl>,

J. J. Lodder <jjl...@xs4all.nl> wrote:

>The most notorious example was the 1919 physics prize,
>given to some experimentalist nobody (to his own great surprise)
>for the achievement of his name not being Albert Einstein,

It was given to Johannes Stark. He went on - by coincidence,
presumably - to become an enthusiastic Nazi and denounced Einstein's
"Jewish physics". According to Wikipedia he called Heisenberg a
"white Jew".

It seems unlikely that Einstein would have received the prize as early
as 1919 anyway - it was only during the solar eclipse of that year
that the famous confirmation of relativity was done.

-- Richard

[J. J. Lodder]

Sorry, my mistake, I meant the 1920 prize,
which was given to Charles Edouard Guillaume:
"in recognition of the service he has rendered to precision measurements
in Physics by his discovery of anomalies in nickel steel alloys"

The 1921 prize was passed 'for lack of a suitable candidate'.
Having thoroughly disgraced themselves in the physics community by then
the 1921 prize was finally given to Albert Einstein after all in 1922,
together with the 1922 prize to Niels Bohr.
Einstein declined the invitation to come to Stockholm to collect it,
and the German ambasssador did the honours.

Apart from that, Einstein never got a nobel prize for relativity,
not even in 1922.
The cowards in Stockholm didn't dare, precisely because of the noises
coming from nationalistic and anti-semitic Germans like Stark.
He got it for an experimentalists subject instead,

Jan

[Richard Tobin]

In article <1mcftp4.zeu...@de-ster.xs4all.nl>,

According to
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1921/
it was "for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for
his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect".

Another physicist who was passed over for a prize was Lise Meitner,
who should have received the 1944 prize (award in 1945) jointly with
Otto Hahn. I seem to remember reading that the minutes of the Nobel
committee (or something of the kind) are published after 70 years and
that more might therefore be revealed about this in 2014 or 2015, but
I have heard nothing about it and can no longer find the reference.

-- Richard

[Richard Tobin]

In article <mvtds0$27qa$1...@macpro.inf.ed.ac.uk>, I wrote:

>Another physicist who was passed over for a prize was Lise Meitner,
>who should have received the 1944 prize (award in 1945) jointly with
>Otto Hahn.

Incidentally it was the chemistry prize (as was one of Marie Curie's)
even though we usually think of nuclear reactions as physics now.

-- Richard

[Dingbat]

Some of the experimental techniques were not devised by these laureates:
Taking measurements in a mine: provided by Ray Davis
Using heavy water in an acrylic tank: provided by Herbert Chen

[Jerry Friedman]

Both fine for me, though it's strange to go from headlinese to a very
colloquial register.

--
Jerry Friedman

[Dr. HotSalt]

On Friday, October 16, 2015 at 6:02:51 PM UTC-7, Peter Moylan wrote:
> On 2015-Oct-17 05:58, Dr. HotSalt wrote:
>
> > If a new class of particles has to be added to it, it would be analogous
> > to having to rearrange or add another layer to the periodic table.
>
> The periodic table goes funny from atomic number 57 anyway. Doesn't this
> amount to a new layer?

It "goes funny" there the same way it does at 4 and 21.

"In presentations of the periodic table, the lanthanides and the actinides are customarily shown as two additional rows below the main body of the table, with placeholders or else a selected single element of each series (either lanthanum and actinium, or lutetium and lawrencium) shown in a single cell of the main table, between barium and hafnium, and radium and rutherfordium, respectively. This convention is entirely a matter of aesthetics and formatting practicality; a rarely used wide-formatted periodic table inserts the lanthanide and actinide series in their proper places, as parts of the table's sixth and seventh rows (periods)."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lanthanide

> (I concede that this has nothing to do with neutrinos.)

It's all about electron shells; strictly Standard Model stuff.


Dr. HotSalt

[J. J. Lodder]

She was also nominated for the physics prize.
The Meitner affair is often cited as an example of gender bias.
(and of course she was a theoretician too)

She had a subtle posthumous revenge:
===
Until 1997, element 105 was unofficially known as hahnium.
In 1997, the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry
adopted the name dubnium for element 105
and the name meitnerium for element 109.
The element hahnium no longer exists.
===

Jan

[Dingbat]

The former is taken from a headline* calling neutrinos "chameleons of space". The latter is my punny response to the headline.

The chameleons of space - Nobelprize.org
https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2015/popular-physicsprize2015.pdf