Neutrinos

Why are neutrinos relevant?

The main reason is that the lowest mass neutrino, very likely the electron neutrino, is stable.

That is a big deal!

We only know two stable particles beside this one. The electron, and the proton. Everything, stable is made out of this two. You may think that the neutron also should be in this list; but neutrons are only stable near protons, by themselves they die in a few minutes, they do not even make it to an hour. What can you build with such an ephemeral particle?

You may also be thinking that I should add the photon and the graviton to the list. These are "force" particles, not "matter" particles. They move at the speed of light and it is hard to build things with them alone. There are lasers of course, those are photon beams. But they cannot stop, or it takes a lot of effort to stop them. In any case the lowest mass neutrino is in this category of elementary particles and therefore we could build things with them. There is a catch though, they interact very weakly. The Fermilab experimental result I posted in this blog depends on tons of material to detect a few neutrinos; but there it is the first neutrino telegraph in the history of womankind; that is relevant science!

All you have to do, is get access to the tunnel at Fermilab, take control of the beam and start sending your Morse code signal. Dot, space, space, dot,... There you have it, your buddies at Soudan Minnesota, will decode your message, and unfortunately right now cannot send you another neutrino beam, because the facility does not have that feature. Maybe in the next version of the gigantic detector and beam system, they can make it bi-directional. It is not being done right now because is expensive, and much cheaper to pick up your cell-phone and call your buddies in a back and forth channel.

A neutrino telegraph would be more relevant if you you want to send your message to China, now we are talking. Just move the direction of your neutrino gun and send it through the center of the Earth. A cell-phone conversation will have to go through satellites. In any case, it is good to have alternatives, maybe the need will arise some day. The proof of principle was achieved for the first time in Herstory by Fermilab staff.