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Neutrino Research Paper

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What started off as a placeholder to make the mathematics of a nuclear reaction a little easier, ended up becoming one of the most fascinating research topics in the world, with three Nobel prizes already awarded and billions spent on learning just how these “place holders” work. The neutrino, meaning “little neutral one” in Italian, is among the most controversial, unorthodox, and exciting particle that scientists are studying. The research paper will not only address the importance of these tiny particles, but in addition to the interesting history behind the discoveries of the various characteristics, what that means for modern science, and the future of neutrino and theoretical physics research. In nuclear physics, there are various types …show more content…

McDonald and Takaaki Kajita. In the 1960s, Enrico Fermi’s beta-decay recipe was accepted as fact, and scientists were efficient at predicting the amount of neutrinos and neutrino’s energy that came from nuclear reactions. In fact, scientists were able to predict the number of neutrinos that came from the sun and could be detected by ultra-sensitive detectors on Earth. However, there was a problem: they were completely …show more content…

At other neutrino laboratories, it was discovered that there were different types, or flavors, of neutrinos: the electron, muon, and tau neutrino flavors. In 1987, neutrino detectors noticed a minute difference in the time of arrival of neutrinos produced from Supernova 1987A. Scientists concluded from this event that neutrinos must have mass if they do not travel at the speed of light. These facts, combined with highly advanced mathematics led to the solution of the solar neutrino problem: the neutrinos must change flavor by the time they arrive to Earth – known as neutrino oscillation. To theoretical physicists, this is as strange as a neutron changing into a proton as it traveled through space; neutrino oscillation also meant that neutrinos can change their

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