Everything about Neutrinos melts my brain (without even interacting with it 🙂)

I don't know how, but I'm going to start incorporating "is a banana left-handed" into regular conversations.

@fermilab

2 жыл бұрын

Please report back on how it goes!

As a physicist and as someone who enjoy chaos in general, I freaking love neutrinos

That's the first time I "understood" the relationship between mass states and flavours. That was brilliantly explained, Dr. Duffy ❤️

@wenkoibital4779

2 жыл бұрын

Actually ,U don't.

@vicca4671

2 жыл бұрын

@@wenkoibital4779 that's why it's between "

@elsonboles

2 жыл бұрын

Me too. Excellent. There must be some interaction with Higgs field or other fields that accounts for the oscillation.

@markcullen5989

2 жыл бұрын

I could not agree more. F’in brilliant. I totally didn’t understand it before and now I just mostly don’t understand it =)

Great analogies for explaining superposition and the act of measuring.

"Mass state 1, mass state 2, and mass state 1,000,000" You had me with this. I was fully ready to believe it, because sometimes science terminology really is that silly.

@fermilab

2 жыл бұрын

Wouldn't that be fun if it was really the case?

The last bit of info about that experiment was amazing!!

Thank you for explaining this to me. This was the first time somebody explained it which was really helpful for me. I always thought this was something different, but you cleared it up. Amazing video, 11/10.

I absolutely love these amazing videos you guys at the fermi lab produce! I always learn something new! Keep up the fantastic work!!

Such a great explanation, thank you so much!

4:10 here's the mind melting part. As if the rest weren't... But this vifeo is the best way of explaining this I've ever seen, great job.

Nice clear lecture. The oscillations give me the impression that neutrinos should not be classified as "fundamental" particles, like protons aren't due to their quark constituents.

@drdca8263

2 жыл бұрын

I don’t see why. How would this suggest that it could be decomposed into smaller particles?

@brothermine2292

2 жыл бұрын

@@drdca8263 : Well, at the very least it's a hint that the muon neutrino and tau neutrino (which are more massive than the electron neutrino) aren't fundamental. They may be a confined combination of an electron neutrino plus something that has more mass (or energy). Perhaps analogous to an electron that absorbed a photon and jumped from its ground state orbital to a higher orbital.

@dynapb

2 жыл бұрын

@Brothers Mine I would have to agree with you. To me the neutrino would be a complex particle and different parts of it that are oscillating interact at different times. The "speed difference" would just be internal to the particle.

@gordonn4915

2 жыл бұрын

Yeah it seems they were defined by a test outcome. Seems like there is something making up a set (kind of like quarks).

Amazing video! Thank you so much for explaining this concept with such easy to understand analogies! ❤️

I don’t understand this at all - I’m sure I’m not alone in that - but it is amazing that all of this physics is “true”. Thanks for the informative and fun lectures.

@ivanjelenic5627

2 жыл бұрын

What's good to remember is that this works well in practice. We don't know what's the real story (we can have educated guesses), but we have a mathematical system to describe the outcome very well.

@TheoEvian

2 жыл бұрын

I'll try to explain this even simpler: the three types of neutrinos (electron, muon, tau) are not actually how the neutrinos travel, they travel as different three types (mass states) that have differing probabilities of being one of the three flavour types. The mass types are actually ALSO mixed so this is why the probabilites change over time, hence, neutrino oscilation. It is just things being mixed and changing over time, rotating, like the colours on the ball. Because things without mass cannot experience time, cannot experience change, the fact neutrinos change over time is important because it means they need to have mass when they travel - before that we kinda thought they would be massless. Does this help?

Thanks Ashley real world analogies are a brilliant way of teaching difficult concepts. You are an exceptional teacher. Many thanks from Ireland🍀🍀🍀.

this mass-states flavors relationship definitely needs its own video

Love it! Thank you for your work!

Simplest analogy - That short vid did a great job for me. Someone said , it takes an expert to come up with a really good explanation. Pay Rise that Team.

Thankyou for an excellent series of videos that helps us understand more about these weird neutrinos.

Thanks for the refreshing episode 😄

Thank you for explaining.

Brilliant thanks.

“Physics is the business of calculating probabilities” Richard Feynman

I love Even Bananas!

Thank you! Enjoyed it.

Beautiful! And the explanations were not too bad also.

This was very good. Thank you!

I can tell that I learned something about QM because adding known-good information to my mental model left me more confused than when I started. Progress! On to the next video in the series.

I am old enough to remember the "solar neutrino problem", which was solved by discovering neutrino oscillations. My question is now, did the eccentricity of the earth's orbit reflect in the ratios of neutrino flavours detected?

@myusernamehere9972

2 жыл бұрын

Why would their be any correlation between the earths orbit and neutrino oscillations?

@tomkerruish2982

2 жыл бұрын

@@myusernamehere9972 it would change the Sun-Earth distance.

Love this channel!

Mind melting 👌

Seriously, your videos are significantly underrated. This one is your best so far, the only one I've seen clearly presenting this tricky subject. I thought I knew a lot until I watched it. Turns out I was wrong. BTW I grew up in Bloomingdale and went to Glenbard North HS in Carol Stream. We would ride our bikes out to the Fox River, down to Batavia, over and then back up Kirk Road. Big fan for most of my life.

I like the beach ball analogy! Great video as always :)

Even Bananas made me just fall in love with Neutrinos and their Ice Cream analogy! I even aspire to become a Neutrino Physicist at Fermilab, if that's a thing.

@fermilab

2 жыл бұрын

It's definitely a thing! We await your future application. :)

This series is bananas 😂

My brain just melted.

I was just thinking about quarks transmuting via the weak force which made me wonder if there is a force causing the oscillation of neutrinos. It doesn't sound like it from this video. It sounds more like neutrinos are self-entangled if that term is valid here. I'm beginning to wonder if the netrino flavors are really different partcles in the sense that electrons, muons and taus are. Is there maybe just one neutrino that we percieve in different ways. A side question, Is the week force responsible ofr the transmutation of quarks between levels, e.g. up to strange. Or does it just have up to down. strange to charm etc?

Very interesting, thanks

Well done.

Thank you K. What importance do neutrinos have (eg in the constitution of matter)?.

Great video

Wow that was an interesting explanation

I love those videos :) but is the mixing a superposition of flavors governed by the wave function and it's collapse on neutrino interaction into one particular flavor? Or is it a different process, only also governed by probability?

@physicsman3603

2 жыл бұрын

I'll try to give a decent answer to your question, so please bear with me. Imagine you are able to produce an electron neutrino. Initially, the wavefunction describing the system, and thus the neutrino, will consist of purely one flavor state, and that is the electron neutrino you have produced. Neutrino flavors are associated to the mass states via a transformation called the PMNS matrix, which simply means that every neutrino flavor is a superposition of the mass states. So, having in mind all the above, you can express the initial wavefunction (electron neutrino) with respect to the mass states. The mass states are also related to the neutrino flavors via the inverse transformation, which means that the mass states are also superpositions of the neutrino flavors. Having this in mind, you can rewrite the wavefunction again, but now with respect to the neutrino flavors, ending up with a wavefunction that is a superposition of all the neutrino flavors. This final wavefunction contains all the information about the probability with which your initial electron neutrino will convert into an other flavor. When the neutrino interacts with the detector, the wavefunction collapses to a certain flavor with a certain probability, and thus, by the outcoming particle in the detector one can tell which neutrino flavor interacted. I hope I gave you some clarity and not a headache.

Great episode! How about a discussion of massive neutrinos traveling at less than the speed of light and how this affects handedness?

Hmm. I am curious! 1) Since you can produce electrons, myons and tau with neutrinos, could you do measurement with those to measure wobbling of tau (the same stuff you measured with myons)? 2) According to video 6:42, myon and tau oscillate at opposite phase than electrons, why? 3)Why we dont have up, down etc flavors?

Beach ball analogy is great!

1:00 Finally, 1D glasses!

Good stuff

Great video. Just one question. Is there oscilation in the charged leptons? I guess if there ant itvwould be very tiny, ‘cause the mass of an electron is a very accurate propierty, so it wont’n be a lot of uncertainity on it

That's such a clever analogy :0

So does the distribution of each mass state change over time? Or does it change between mass state's over time.

Would it be correct to think of the neutrino oscillation as a collapse of the wave function similar to detecting the location of an electron? Why or why not? And if it is a good analogy why isn't it presented this way?

Hi, I actually do have an analogy that provides a good visualisation of neutrino oscillations, in my opinion. I've made a video about this but I haven't posted it on youtube (I was thinking about making a series about neutrino physics myself, but you've already done such a great job at this!). Where could I reach you to send it over?

Is the missing hand mass property of the neutrino a result of an asymptotic freedom?

as far as analogies go, I prefer linear polarized light in a birefringent crystal: 2 orthogonal states H& V propagate with different indices of refraction, so if we create/detect only in some rotated polarization H',V'...we're gonna see oscillations between them. Of course, having 3 states adds some nuance, but it's a start.

@tim40gabby25

2 жыл бұрын

Hi. Your analogy is not quite so easy to grasp. Repost, if you can?

Love the flower

Is this the same way spin measurement works? Like it’s 50-50 until measured right? I think this applies to other properties too like location.

Beginning at around 5:30 is a brief, vague comment about a relationship between neutrino oscillation and the neutrino's energy. I'm wondering whether a neutrino's speed varies (oscillates) while it travels... so that its energy will be conserved. Also, whether speed is a property of a neutrino, since we're told mass isn't one of its properties.

Dr..Duffy:I’m not sure if this is even the correct way to phrase my question, but If the same neutrino is detected more than once, is it possible that between detections it might have oscillated to a different flavor and mass state? If so, is it just be the statistical results of the different detections that determines if same neutrino is actually an electron, tau or muon neutrino? Resbetfully, WS

a probability as function of time/distance :) amazing

Is it like quantum superposition of states? You have all flavours in a wave function which collapses when observed. Or this analogy doesn't work on neutrinos?

the unpeeled banana in the cocktail is really sending me.

Do the various mass states and flavour states act as orthogonal observables as in the Stern Gerlach experiment for perpendicular spins and do they also bring about

@deepanbetal5219

2 жыл бұрын

Simmilar kind of commutation relations

@drdca8263

2 жыл бұрын

My understanding (not authoritative): If the mass and flavor are both observables (and it seems to me that they must be), then the mass eigenstates must be orthogonal to each-other, and, separately , the flavor states must be orthogonal to each-other, And if you have an operator that gives the mass, and one that gives the flavor, then these two operators will not commute, But I don’t know what their commutator would look like. This probably doesn’t really answer your question.

This was elucidated with the best of them. The two-tier abstraction can be vied with when one is provided with diagrams such as those seen here. Now, who made these fascinating beach balls?

I am interested in the specifics of that 49%,49%,1%.. Where can I find the exact ratios?

@SimonClarkstone

2 жыл бұрын

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pontecorvo%E2%80%93Maki%E2%80%93Nakagawa%E2%80%93Sakata_matrix In the matrix in the "Experimentally measured parameter values" section, each column is a mass state. I think you have to square the numbers from the matrix to get the actual probabilities, after which they seem to match the video's description of the states.

Are these strange properties only associated with neutrinos or are there some more general principles at work that also sometimes show up in other kinds of particles?

I think the spin of the neutrinos is connected to an unstable dimension. According to my theory, it has a 0.5 spin as 0.5+0.5 between 3 standard dimensions. And when it travels it can make 3 types of neutrinos for each dimension. If it takes only one 0.5 for a spin then the other 0.5 should try to be stable making dimensions like 1-0.5. And again it can become unstable because it has created another unstable -0.5 dimension too. So it should try to be stable again making dimensions like -1+0.5. And if elementary particles don't have an extra 0.5 unstable dimension, then the 3 layers of the 3 standard dimensions should be stable. I think the first layer (Up Quark, Down Quark, Electron, Electron Neutrino) in the standard model is generally based on only 1 main standard dimension. And generally, there is 1 more standard dimension (like 1-1) in the second layer. And same like that, there are 2 more standard dimensions in the third layer. - S.W.

Just got back ftrom the beach, its physics time!

Fun fact. Kirsty oscillated into different people as the other friends ! Great explanation as always ☺️

Do neutrino oscillations includes fermions and antifermions at the same time? i.e. are their oscillations between "six flavors"?

I saw the beach ball and thought, aah this will be easy...pfftptptf. Great series, thank you for it.

clear 100%

Great explanation, this is the first time neutrino oscillations kind of make sense to me

Very well presented, I think I kind of understand neutrino oscillations... at least more than before. If an electron neutrino interacts with an atom, could it make it an ion?

Let me add a thought/question. When a neutrino is created, e.g. in a nuclear beta decay (I guess actually an electron anti-neutrino), wouldn't it be in a flavor eigenstate at that moment -- i.e., an electron antineutrino? That flavor eigenstate would be a linear combination of mass eigenstates, so as the electron anti-neutrino propagated, the mass states would travel at slightly different speeds, changing the mix observed at any particular point, which in turn (since mass eigenstates are also superpositions of flavor eigenstates) changing the mix of flavor eigenstates, which determine the probabilities that any particular flavor will be observed at a particular point? Is that correct? Or am I missing something (as usual)?

@gilbertanderson3456

2 жыл бұрын

@@goasthmago6354 if neutrinos have mass and velocity they have momentum. they use neutrinos to explain unbalanced momentum at LHC?

I find it intreging that neutrinos come in exactly three flavors. It suggests to me that the other properties that come in threes are all there are too. Why do so many proprties come in threes in the quantum world? : quark flavors, quark levels, electron/muon/tau, three quarks in a proton and neutron, three levels of electric charge, three levels of spin. Lots of things come in pairs too (though no fours or fives). But we see pairs in the macro-world, not many threes, except three dimensions.

Does the superposition of mass states change as the neutrino travels? Or does it stay the same?

@chriskennedy2846

2 жыл бұрын

The simple part of this is starting with a mass state. So if we look at mass state #2 we have an equal mix or equal probability of any of the 3 flavors being detected. That kind of makes sense. But the statements: "each flavor is a mixture of the mass states" and "it turns out that different masses were inside them all along, and so were the flavors" are a little confusing to me. Despite the confusion - I think what is happening is that if a neutrino is produced, it is produced as a particular mass state from the beginning and remains that mass state throughout, including at the detection point. So a neutrino (unknown to us) might have been produced as a mass state #2 neutrino but we don't know that. So for us, we not only don't know what flavor we will get, but we also don't know its mass state until detected. So the bottom line (if I'm correct) is that the flavor is truly unknowable until detected because of pure probability since that neutrino is carrying the characteristics of all 3, but the mass state is fixed from the beginning, and that's unknowable not because it's undefined, it's unknowable because we have no way of seeing the fixed mass state before detection, and if somehow we magically knew the mass state before detection - we would be able to confidently predict the mass state for any of the flavors upon detection. I'm not sure - but I think that is what's happening.

Neutrinos seem to have a strange quality called "brain melting at a distance."

A brilliant presentation, a very complicated concept explained verynwell

I think of a neutrino as being an energy mixture of multiple frequencies. This is why they do not react easily as any one frequency does not have sufficient energy to be captured by a particle. It is only when all frequencies are at a common node, as evidenced by the color in your representation, that they are vulnerable to react and collapse their energy into changing the state in a particle reaction. If true then this should give some evidence to the conditions under which a neutrino is created. It suggests to me that each of the Quarks in the reaction give up a portion of their energy at a different frequency, and this gives some clues as to the nature of the energy dynamics within the Quark from a mechanistic point of view. I think of the energy within a quark as operating something like a Hopf Fibration where a protons 2 up quarks and the down quark produce a channel through which an induced energy flow, a consequence of the quark energy dynamics, which presents as a string loop that anchors an electron to that proton. It is the position of the proton in the atom nucleus that determines the range of that energy string and thus the shell position of its electron. In my mechanistic model that is.

When you discuss speed, do you mean the speed of oscillation? Because if it were speed of travel then we would expect the neutrinos to separate. Overall very enjoyable and amusing video. I cant decide about its clarity, because it was either unclear or it was clear and neutrinos are not comprehendable. So I am in a superposition of neutrino ambiguities.

@nmarbletoe8210

Жыл бұрын

speed of travel i think

Do the mass state combinations oscillate too, or is that fixed at the creation of the neutrino?

@bumpty9830

2 жыл бұрын

If the neutrino is in a mass state (which depends on how it's produced), then its representation as flavor states oscillates. If it's in a flavor state, then its mass states oscillate. If you're familiar with linear algebra (or willing to learn a little), the two sets of states are alternative bases for a vector space, and the mass basis is the basis in which time evolution looks simplest. If you find a video about the relationship between linearly polarized light and circularly polarized light, it's the same idea.

Rather then considering the unusual mass distribution of each flavor in a neutrino.. Can we able to construct a special mechanism according to their intrinsic spin.. And distinguish the flavour majority? I think if we are able to design such an mechanism on their spin then we somehow can easily detect the flavors!

Is it possible to know how frequent, the oscilation takes place? Or is the oscilation just another property of measuring it?

@patrick.gilmore

2 жыл бұрын

We know how frequently the neutrino changes, which is why we can figure out where to place detectors to see certain flavors. The graphic at 7:07 (ish) is Fermilab's neutrino source and the detector they are building, which is called "DUNE".

Could we find variations in the probabilities of finding specific flavours at specific distances by generating the neutrinos at relativistic speeds, like by accelerating plasma of an unstable isotope in opposite directions and measuring the effects of acceleration and oscillation of neutrinos created on each of them?

@Lucius_Chiaraviglio

2 жыл бұрын

Since neutrinos move at extremely close to the speed of light, it seems like you would need a really big distance to do this in because you would have to crank the unstable nuclei up to really high speeds and then have room for them to decay (at a rate slowed by approaching the speed of light), but if you could get the space to do the experiment in, you might see something. Maybe if you could convince CERN to let you borrow the Large Hadron Collider for a bit?

@dubsar

2 жыл бұрын

@@Lucius_Chiaraviglio I was thinking about building a new particle accelerator on the moon (or at least the detectors). But as I am not a physicist, most people with whom I talk about such ideas think I have some kind of psychiatric disorder.

@Lucius_Chiaraviglio

2 жыл бұрын

​@@dubsar 8-)

@dubsar

2 жыл бұрын

@@Lucius_Chiaraviglio I did not ask them to use their LHC. Instead I asked for their opinion on the subject. I am certain that someone tried it before.

@Lucius_Chiaraviglio

2 жыл бұрын

@@dubsar I wouldn't be so sure that someone has tried this before. I can't swear absolutely that I would have heard of it if somebody had done it, but I would give myself better than 50-50 chances. It wouldn't be a trivial experiment to set up -- you need a neutrino detector at the equator of the LHC (or whatever other ring), and you need to inject make, sort out, and inject powerfully radioactive nuclides into the ring.

Is that a Hitachino Nest glass in the opening bit? Someone there has good taste!

So is there any application for using this to measure distances?

@drdca8263

2 жыл бұрын

I can’t speak authoritatively, but I would suspect not, because they don’t interact very often, and so they are rather hard to detect. But I guess maybe if you mean distance to the sun over time or something?

@nmarbletoe8210

Жыл бұрын

could be used to send coded messages through the earth

That was really great! But I still have trouble to understand how can mass ocilate?

@nmarbletoe8210

Жыл бұрын

it doesn't. in flight it is the flavor probability that oscillates

So does the mass of a neutrino vary depending on it's state of oscillation? Or are there actually 3 different particles traveling together and the one that reaches the detector first wins?

@nmarbletoe8210

Жыл бұрын

there is one particle with a phase that changes during flight. the phase gives the probability that it will be detected as electron, muon or tau type. i think

@billperdue5588

Жыл бұрын

@@nmarbletoe8210 but aren't the different types, also of varying mass?

@nmarbletoe8210

Жыл бұрын

@@billperdue5588 Yes. In flight the neutrino is a single mass and a superposition of the three flavors. When it is detected, it becomes a single flavor with a superposition of the three masses. (I think I'm just starting to get this! maybe.)

AND WHAT ARE THE DIFFERENCES OF TAU ELETRON AND MUON what is the neutrino changing at all

Does neutrino oscillation happen in vacuum, or it requires traveling through normal matter?

@drdon5205

2 жыл бұрын

There is a small change when the neutrinos travel through matter vs. a vacuum. That's not covered in this video.

I have created a neutrino with zero velocity. It has no kinetic energy, just rest mass energy. So now it just sits there, uncertain as to what its mass and hence its energy is, happily violating the conservation of energy. But at least it doesn't have extra dimensions of space and time.

Is the reason there are three mass states connected to the reason there are three flavors? What about there being three colors of quarks, or 3 generations of fundamental particles in general?

I don't think I learned any of this before, although I guess I had college Modern physics around 1989, so unsure what changed since then.

Lucky you didn't choose bowling balls for the analogy. Thanks, that was very interesting, perplexing, but interesting.

A rotating dartboard, falling through space, impaling itself on darts, the scores determining flavours..

Does this have some new consequences on standard model generations of matter in general? Do physicist now have another clue about what they represent and if there is perhaps yet another fundamental force causing them? Another question is: are the oscillations function of distance travelled, or function of time of flight? And can we even change, affect neutrinos' speed? Do they observe conservation of momentum as they change mass during travel?

May be neutrino-neutrino interections define the three flavours, may be all the three flavours are unstable states and keeps on switching between them with a particular time

Excellent presentation for those of us who struggle with this concept, I count myself as a expert struggler. After watching this video I have a much better grip on neutrino oscillations. Can’t say that I really understand it but I think now i will be able to sleep at night.

I don´t understand. How can they all be the same and yet be differnet?! The different states´re all the same mass but at differnet speeds? So is this sort of a doppler effect? It´s sort of dependent on *where* you look at it?