Some very interesting information has been coming out lately about neutrinos, Gamma rays and the Standard Model of Cosmology in general that I though would be interesting to discuss. This does, and will, have a direct impact on YOU!
First, don’t get all “this is too technical’ and not read, this should be very interesting even if you don’t like math or big words.
Neutrinos are defined as:
Neutrinos are omnipresent in nature such that in just one second, tens of billions of them "pass through every square centimetre of our bodies without us ever noticing
So that means that they are everywhere, all the time. They comprise the so called ‘cosmic rays’ commonly referred to in many space articles. In fact, there is no such thing as a ‘cosmic ray’. There are X-rays, Gamma Rays, protons, photons and neutrinos. The first two will hurt you and are rare, and neutrinos are basically omnipresent. They have mass, travel at the speed of light (or faster), and basically pass right thru matter like it wasn’t even there. Which it isn’t, but that is another discussion.
Here we see a graphic showing how particles hit the Earth (i.e. you). Photons (a.k.a. Light) refract. Protons (a.k.a matter) wander based on gravity and based on velocity do just about anything, and Neutrinos don’t even waver, just a straight line from point of origin to where ever it is that they may be going.
Since these little buggers are traveling at light speed and go thru anything, you can imagine that they are hard to detect. They are! and there are (were) 2 main observatories that have the capability of seeing them:
The Sudbury Neutrino Detector
This GLASS BALL is buried 2000 meters underground in Canada and was constructed in 1999 and turned off in 2006. I would ask my readers to think long and hard about how they built this thing almost a mile under ground. Go ahead, I will wait. Ok, back to the program. It is filled with heavy water (deuterium, used to enrich uranium). When a neutrino hits an atom within this water, it emits a photon of blue light. Although this light could be in any direction it typically reflects back in the direction of the neutrino’s origin. What is interesting is that the neutrino carries on its merry way after having broken the deuterium into a neutron and a proton (breaks the atom apart) and emitting the photon.
Originally, it was though that there were only 3 kinds of neutrinos. However, this site has found 2 more and more are expected to be found.
As a side note to an earlier post of mine, this thing was also used in the following:
The SNO detector would have been capable of detecting a supernova within our galaxy if one had occurred while the detector was online. As neutrinos emitted by a supernova are released earlier than the photons, it is possible to alert the astronomical community before the supernova is visible. SNO was a founding member of the Supernova Early Warning System (SNEWS) with Super-Kamiokande and the Large Volume Detector. No such supernovas have yet been detected.
Some really basic questions I would ask If such an early warning system exists:
- Why do we need early warning? What would these ‘nova’ do? I know, but helping make a point.
- How do the neutrinos get here faster than the photons? Photons travel at the speed of light. Do you know something we don’t? Do the neutrinos form days or weeks prior to light being emitted? Again, just saying cause perhaps you know how neutrinos are formed?
Not that you could do anything about this stuff, but I guess they are worried about ‘something’.
South Pole Neutrino Observatory
This is an array of over 5000 sensors frozen into the ice DIRECTLY under the South Pole (Antarctica for the geographically challenged).
It is a high energy neutrino telescope built into one cubic kilometer of ice. Each hole (86) are drilled 2.5 kilometers deep. This was finished in January 2011, so this thing still smells new.
It also detects the same blue light emissions but using a different setup.
What has IceCube discovered?
Now for the fun part. What you should have been asking yourself this whole time is: Where do they come from?
Funny you should ask. They don’t know, but here is the classical definition:
may originate from events in the universe such as "colliding black holes, gamma ray bursts from exploding stars, and violent events at the cores of distant galaxies," according to some speculation by scientists
We will take them one at a time:
Colliding black holes: Well for something that is ‘omnipresent’ there must be a lot of bumping going on. Since no black hole collisions have ever been seen, we can just rule this one out.
Gamma ray bursts (from where ever really): This is what the Standard model suggested as true.
Violent events at the cores of Galaxies: Notice how they said ‘other’ and more ‘distant’ Galaxies and not our own. Funny that. Anyway, this is the one they did not want to be true.
The Sun: Not mentioned here, but some neutrinos are probably created by Fusion occurring in our Sun and every other Star. Just saying. We can also artificially produce them in particle accelerators like CERN. Both of these seem to be ‘low’ energy and I really don’t know what that means.
Gamma Ray Burst (GRB) as a source
GRBs are extremely powerful explosions, first observed by satellites using X-rays or gamma rays. GRBs are relatively frequent occurrences, seen about once per day around the visible Universe. Typical GRBs last a few seconds, and during this brief time they can outshine the rest of the Universe combined. Despite this, little is known about them.
Whitehorn and Redl studied 300 GRBs reported by satellites on the GRB Coordinates Network between May 2008 and April 2010, looking for any neutrinos originating from the observed gamma ray burst position and time.
And after much observation:
resulted in no evidence for neutrinos being produced by GRB,
“Calculations embracing the concept that cosmic ray protons are the decay products of neutrons that escaped the magnetic confinement of the GRB fireball are supported by the research community and have been convincingly excluded by the present data,”
And the last little interesting tidbit: They detected a neutrino source .3 light years away. That is NOT the sun and is NOT a Gamma Ray burst. Queue the Twilight Zone music.
Galactic Cores as a source
My favorite all along has always been the Galactic Core! This is what Space.com has to say about it.
Instead of gamma-ray bursts, researchers note that black holes at the centers or nuclei of active galaxies may be responsible for these ultra-high-energy cosmic rays, sucking in matter and spitting out enormous particle jets as they gorge.
"Active galactic nuclei are big — great big accelerators that may be able to accelerate particles to very high energies," said Klein, a long-time member of the IceCube Collaboration.
IceCube has looked for neutrinos from active galactic nuclei, but as yet the data is inconclusive
If you are at all interested in the Galactic core, or more specifically, OUR Galactic core and how this may have any real-life importance to you at all, please read Watch This Space parts 1-7 on this site.
A little historical background (circa 1987)
Time lapse (from Hubble space Telescope) of what happens when the explosion (nova) interacts with materials surrounding the star. This is what a Galactic wave would look like. This is just a star, think Black Hole about a BILLION times larger.
For 13 seconds a tsunami of neutrinos, emanating from a giant star eleven billion times more distant than the sun, flooded earth. This wave of neutrinos paled the steady stream of neutrinos reaching us from the sun by a factor of more than ten thousand.
Yet no one noticed.
neutrino observatories had detected a signal with the same time stamp: 7:36 GMT.
Three hours later astronomers observed thru their optical telescopes a new star flaring up in the Large Magellan Cloud. The star continued to increase in brightness, and despite its mind-blowing 170,000 light years distance from earth, the star quickly became visible to the human eye. A supernova explosion had heralded the birth of a neutron star. And for the very first time, humans had directly observed the ultimate armageddon: a core collapse taking place deep inside an imploding giant star.
To put this into perspective, consider the neutrino counts that characterize the supernova event twenty five years ago. Every square foot of earth got penetrated by a blast of 100,000,000,000,000 neutrinos. Despite this tsunami of neutrinos flooding earth, the combined volumes of Kamiokande II, IMB and Baksan observed no more than 25 neutrinos.
So that all fits with both this post and my previous post, but what is weird here (I don’t write about it unless it is weird).
OK, ok… let me introduce you to a well kept secret: rumor has it that superluminal neutrinos were observed already 25 years ago. Yes, that’s right: we are talking here about superluminal supernova neutrinos.
Google for ‘SN1987A’, and you will find lots of articles on the supernova neutrinos detected 25 years ago. Most of these articles will mention the three experiments discussed above: Kamiokande II, IMB, and Baksan. However, a fourth neutrino detector also measured a signal from the direction of the Large Magellan Cloud: the LSD detector operated by a French-Italian team. LSD saw five neutrino events. Strangely enough, this happened five hours before the other three detectors signaled supernova neutrinos. Already in 1998 (way before the 2011 hype!) this observation got attributed to neutrinos reaching superluminal speeds.
Well maybe, just maybe, we have not yet settled the faster than light question!
The ‘Official Version’ as it pertains to Neutrino emissions
Approximately three hours before the visible light from SN 1987A reached the Earth, a burst of neutrinos was observed at three separate neutrino observatories. This is likely due to neutrino emission (which occurs simultaneously with core collapse) preceding the emission of visible light (which occurs only after the shock wave reaches the stellar surface). At 7:35 a.m. Universal time, Kamiokande II detected 11 antineutrinos; IMB, 8 antineutrinos; and Baksan, 5 antineutrinos; in a burst lasting less than 13 seconds. Approximately three hours earlier, the Mont Blanc liquid scintillator detected a five-neutrino burst, but this is generally not believed to be associated with SN 1987A.
Although the actual neutrino count was only 24, it was a significant rise from the previously observed background level. This was the first time neutrinos emitted from a supernova had been observed directly, which marked the beginning of neutrino astronomy. The observations were consistent with theoretical supernova models in which 99% of the energy of the collapse is radiated away in neutrinos. The observations are also consistent with the models’ estimates of a total neutrino count of 1058 with a total energy of 1046 joules.
The neutrino measurements allowed upper bounds on neutrino mass and charge, as well as the number of flavors of neutrinos and other properties. For example, the data show that within 5% confidence, the rest mass of the electron neutrino is at most 16 eV. The data suggests that the total number of neutrino flavors is at most 8 but other observations and experiments give tighter estimates. Many of these results have since been confirmed or tightened by other neutrino experiments such as more careful analysis of solar neutrinos and atmospheric neutrinos as well as experiments with artificial neutrino sources.
Why this is hard to take at face value:
Lets just take the pertinent parts as they apply to this discussion of neutrinos.
- Neutrino flavors is at most 8. Well read anywhere about neutrinos and you only hear about 3. The 8 were actually predicted! prior to actual discovery. Check it out.
- Actual neutrino count was only 24. From this one event, we only get 24 collisions. Speaks to the rarity of an actual collision actually happening! Keep this in mind.
- Approximately three hours earlier, the Mont Blanc liquid scintillator detected a five-neutrino burst, but this is generally not believed to be associated with SN 1987A. They are saying, that these 5 (one fifth of all observed collisions from this event) were not related. Really? Then what/where caused them? What allows them to discard observed information?
- preceding the emission of visible light . This bit is important. They are saying that the core collapses (internal to the star). The result is that 99% of the energy of the star is converted into neutrinos and ejected. i.e. Gone, left the building. Then for some reason at either 3 hours or 6 hours (depending on who you believe), the star bursts in a VISIBLE way. We detect the neutrinos early because of this phenomenon. Personally, I don’t think they have made a case. Theories must match observation and this is a stretch in my opinion.
If you want to watch a video discussing this event
(albeit in a different context)
Or a this version of events (very detailed!) from the Electric Universe
Supernova 1987A Decoded
24 August 2005