Let's start big. As far as I can tell, complicated science is all sort of game where you look at something make a theory out of that and then the next person makes a theory based on that theory until you've wound up with theories on top of theories on top of theories. A chain or tower of theories, like at one point you have "gravity" (that's pretty near the bottom [ie pretty important]) and then you've got things like "super strings" which are much more recent so they're closer to the top of the tower thing or the end of the chain. Then periodically, people manage to put together millions of dollars to run an experiment that will either prove or disprove one of the many theories of which this "science jenga thing" is composed. MiniBooNE is one of those experiments.
So basically, either MiniBooNE says, "yes" in which case the tower doesn't collapse at the point that neutrino flavors and "charge-parity symmetry" currently exist in the theory tower, or MiniBooNE says no, in which case the tower collapses a little and we have to go back and rebuild.
Well. It's looking like maybe we gotta back and rebuild.
As you know, the MiniBooNE experiment is trying to figure out whether the results of the LSND experiment from the 1990's are right or totally wrong. Generally, people think there are three types of neutrinos, which are really really small particles that, like, shoot through your body all the time without you even noticing. People also think neutrinos may not weigh anything. Anything at all! Maybe they do.
LSND basically said:
- "Neutrinos have mass, cause they keep doing this thing where they change from one type of neutrino to another one, which, for some science reason means that they weigh something."
- "There seems to be a 4th type of neutrino, called a sterile neutrino, that you didn't know about. The neutrinos we're looking at are changing from one kind of neutrino to another so fast, that there has to be a 4th kind, we're pretty sure."
So, now, MiniBooNE is here to try to prove whether these crazy LSND findings are true, and it seems like MiniBooNE is maybe saying, "yeah, they're true."
So what does that mean? Jesus, how did I work myself into a situation where I had to explain this shit to anyone? I am not qualified.
Anyway.
I think that because the three kinds of neutrinos people agree on - electron, tau and muon neutrinos - all match up neatly with another kind of known particle (electrons, taus, and muons), the existence of a 4th kind might mean that there's a whole different kind of other particle that exists that we've never seen that we don't know fucking ANYTHING about. Which means that the standard model is totally fucked.
The standard model? Oh, that's the very famous model, "concerning the electromagnetic, weak, and strong nuclear interactions, which mediate the dynamics of the known subatomic particle."
Remember anything from high school? Yeah, that stuff was like the really simplified idea of the standard model.
So am I saying that because of the MiniBooNE results, everything you learned in high school might be wrong? No shit, right? I mean, right? You figured that out when you were still in high school! Probably the only thing you figured out in high school that's still true!
But, in all seriousness, yes.
It means that the whole "this is a proton", and "this is a beaker" thing from traditional chemistry might be totally wrong, and we might be even farther from knowing why the fuck everything doesn't just explode all the time, every day (cause that's what certain physics type theories seem to think SHOULD be happening all the time, based on weak forces, strong forces, gravitons, etc.).
Of course, it might all be wrong, and everything might be just like people thought it was back before LSND decided to screw everything up. This guy seems to think we need to wait a while before running naked in the streets, shrieking our lungs to death regarding oscillations and such:
I think I'm with him, for now at least, since I just wrote this thing and I still don't actually have any idea what I'm doing with my life.
More MiniBoone news soon - exciting times we live in.
_Doug
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