UCL: Maximum Mass of Lightest Neutrino Revealed

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UCL: Maximum Mass of Lightest Neutrino Revealed

Post by bystander » Thu Aug 22, 2019 4:40 pm

Maximum Mass of Lightest Neutrino Revealed Using Astronomical Big Data
University College London, UK | 2019 Aug 22

The mass of the lightest neutrino, an abundant ‘ghost’ particle found throughout the universe, has been calculated to be at least six million times lighter than the mass of an electron

Neutrinos come in three flavours made up of a mix of three neutrino masses. While the differences between the masses are known, little information was available about the mass of the lightest species until now.

It’s important to better understand neutrinos and the processes through which they obtain their mass as they could reveal secrets about astrophysics, including how the universe is held together, why it is expanding and what dark matter is made of.

First author, Dr Arthur Loureiro (UCL Physics & Astronomy), said: “A hundred billion neutrinos fly through your thumb from the Sun every second, even at night. These are very weakly interactive ghosts that we know little about. What we do know is that as they move, they can change between their three flavours, and this can only happen if at least two of their masses are non-zero.”

“The three flavours can be compared to ice cream where you have one scoop containing strawberry, chocolate and vanilla. Three flavours are always present but in different ratios, and the changing ratio–and the weird behaviour of the particle–can only be explained by neutrinos having a mass.” ...

Upper Bound of Neutrino Masses from Combined Cosmological
Observations and Particle Physics Experiments
~ Arthur Loureiro et al
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