Category Archives: Universe

Will’s Neutrino Story

The surface of the sun is hot, but even more so, at its core is a crazy intense pressing together of  hydrogen atoms, that pressing called nuclear fusion.  

Like being deep underwater, when your ears pop from the added pressure, the huge sun presses down at the core, sparking radiative processes that chase photons and neutrinos outwards.

The photons struggle to get back to the surface, but the neutrinos zing out.

If you were to point at the sun while reading this, even if at night, when people in China are enjoying daylight, the number of neutrinos coming from the sun and going through the tip of your pointing finger, is immense; trillions every passing second, that’s a 1 followed by 12 zeros, or one thousand billion neutrinos.

Fusing hydrogen together spawns neutrinos, in that case neutrinos which are kin to electrons, as both are produced in that fusion process.

Our Sun is the mother of a solar system of eight planets, and a couple dwarf planets. Each and every star out there is some solar system’s sun. Each is fired by the same fusion process that produces neutrinos, their sister electrons, and both visible and invisible light.

There are hundreds of billions of suns in the Milky Way galaxy, maybe thousands, and a similar number in our nearest neighbor, Andromeda.

Wow, so many neutrinos are zinging around the galaxy, should we learn more, and study these birds?

Other particles are produced in deep space, protons for example also are chasing around, some of which find their way to the Earth, sort of like flashing shooting stars, penetrate the highest reaches of the Earth’s atmosphere and bump into the nitrogen and oxygen that eventually we breathe.

These cosmic protons, like the solar-born neutrinos, are moving fast, very fast, and therefore pack a punch; consider that speed to be 186,000 miles per second – woh! That’s the same as the speed of light.

Protons are very light weight, as well as being tiny in size. Too tiny to see with microscopes of any kind, although with modern technology seeing molecules is nearly possible. In your body there are approximately one trillion trillion protons – cool.

Despite their fast speed and small size, these Earthbound protons have a lot of energy – like imagine how good you feel when you sleep well, and are excited about the coming day, lots of capacity to do things, lots of energy.

With that high energy, the incoming protons shake up the nitrogen and oxygen they fly by, high altitude interactions fired by their electrical and magnetic natures; the result is that a different particle is born, these are called pions.

Electrons are easy to make because they are among the smallest of particles, as are pions. In collisions of subatomic particles, for example protons on protons, pions become commonplace.

Pions being bigger than electrons, think mass, not size, their tendency is to exhaust themselves and become an electron. Sort of like if a marble were released from the rim of a large bowl which sets on a tabletop, in short order it’d naturally find itself at the bowl’s center, and motionless, its energy zapped. It turns out that pions becoming electrons is a multistep process but occurs in a flash of time, very quickly.

Charged pions traveling in mostly the same direction as its parent proton was, become “massive electrons” and neutrinos. This process is called decay, in this case pion decay, but what are massive electrons?

Well these massive particles are in every way the same as electrons, but more massive; think of them as overweight electrons, and we call these electron-like overweight particles muons.

That is, Earth-bound cosmic protons interact with nitrogen up above where jet airliners fly, produce muons, and then decay into electrons and neutrinos.  These types of neutrinos are deemed muon-type neutrinos, as they are spawned from muons. And yes, the neutrinos that emanate from the sun are electron-type neutrinos.

Albeit much much more rarely, muon-type neutrinos interact with matter (the denser the better) to produce muons, and electron-type neutrinos produce electrons, each with a characteristic signature.

So nature provides us with interesting phenomena, neutrinos have types, physicists call those neutrino flavors.

And finally, nature allows for “obese electrons,” but we will be nice and call those tau-ons, and the corresponding neutrinos are then, tau-type neutrinos. These are mighty but rare, seldom “seen” particles.

Summarizing: that’s three neutrino flavors: electron, muon, and tau-type neutrinos. And I trust this dialog has helped with your question on neutrinos.

There is a great amount of history to learn that goes back almost one hundred  years when neutrinos were first postulated (thought to exist), but no one had “seen” one until the 1950’s (election-type), the 1960’s (muon-type), and in 2000 (tau-type).

Experimentalists like myself are interested in learning more about what neutrinos are, and how they do what they do.

At Fermilab National Accelerator Laboratory, near Chicago, sometimes called Fermilab and named after Enrico Fermi, many physicists alongside engineers are working to understand these neutrinos. We are building a massive experiment called the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) to learn more. 

Check this out: at Fermilab, we create an intense beam of protons which are pointed at graphite (carbon) to produce pions, which quickly decay into muons and muon-type neutrinos.

Those muon-type neutrinos are aimed towards Sturgis, South Dakota, having to have been pointed downwards into the Earth at Fermilab because the Earth is a sphere.

At the depth of one mile, we are building a huge detector, sort of like a camera, to take “pictures” of the muon-type neutrinos interacting inside the detector, albeit in a rare process. I should mention that computer scientists are working with the DUNE physicists because the so-called camera images are mightily large, and we anticipate too many to count.

I alluded to this earlier, but neutrinos rarely interact with matter, and all those neutrinos going through your Sun-pointed finger, keep going, through the floor of your house, into the Earth, right on through the entire Earth, wow, and onwards going way way far away.

But occasionally, yes these neutrinos do interact. So what we have to do at Fermilab to encourage neutrino interactions is to make a whole bunch of them just to see a few of them tickle our deep underground detector.

So here’s the special part, told by colleagues on other particle physics experiments trying to do similarly to DUNE scientists, that is to figure out what a neutrino is. Together, we have learned that when a muon-type neutrino is created at Fermilab, and aimed through the 800 miles of rock between Illinois and South Dakota, some small fraction change into electron-type neutrinos.

To emphasize, we know how to identify the stuff that is “captured on film” in our detectors as the anticipated muon-type neutrinos make themselves known, and separately the unanticipated electron-type neutrinos. But where did the electron-type neutrinos come from, were they not first muon-type neutrinos?

It’s weird, it’s like the neutrino starts out as a cat, then as it travels to South Dakota, it somewhere became a bird. And when we also consider the tau-type neutrino in the process, the original cat became a dog.

Yeah, a cat can become a bird, and/or maybe a dog. If that could really happen you’d wonder if you were reading a Harry Potter book.

We call that ability to change flavor on-the-fly, neutrino oscillation, and unlike any other subatomic particle (almost) neutrinos are special, and we therefore want to know more.

In fact, as neutrinos are the most abundant particle in the universe, except for photons which is the name we use for the particle version of light. And studying the wierd characteristics of the neutrino is likely to get us an understanding on how the universe was first formed some ten billion years ago, and hopefully solving other problems such as, are protons for forever, or what Black Holes might be.

DUNE detectors will also be sensitive to the neutrinos produced when stars larger than our Sun explode – yes, stars are born, and stars die, and when they go, neutrinos are yet again a big part of the picture.

Will, I hope that this story inspires your curiosity.

Your friend, David 

More on DUNE: https://www.dunescience.org

Cars and Guns

Back in the day there were cars, leaded gasoline, catalytic converters were just moving from experimental to full production nationwide, and there was noxious smog.

I spent the first twenty eight years of my life in Louisville, Ky, a geographic area which is fraught with a tendency to enclose hot humid air, the Ohio Valley, and cars were barely realized as a primary source of the smog laden air breathed by each a Looavullian’s lungs.

Burning coal for electricity was another misunderstood source. [1] Policies for emissions from coal plants could be more easily negotiated, as there were only a relative few to negotiate with, but for car owners, reaching a unified perspective was another story. In the United States, according to the Department of Energy, as way back as 2014 there were 800 cars per 1000 people, that is 0.8 per capita, topping all other countries in the world, and trending upwards. [2]

In the late 70’s a goal was to curb automotive emissions and thus constrain the smog that was leading to an increase of asthma in our children, and what was determined later, the deterioration of blood vessel walls in adults. It became apparent to some that the necessary regular maintenance of an automobile could not be de facto trusted to their owners, and thus a law was written, and Vehicle Emission Testing (VET) monitoring sites were established. [3]

Beyond maximizing the efficiency of the balance between consumption and emissions for the notoriously inefficient internal combustion engine, another concern was ensuring safe operation of the cars we drove. Put simply that tires, lights, windshield wipers, and brakes were up to snuff. In all some two dozen points on a car were checked – I specifically recall watching a mechanic attache a jig to aim headlamps most interesting.

Rest assured, after a run through of your car from a VET professional, typically a local small shop mechanic who fortuitously realized the financial and optimistically the healthful opportunities in leading a certified VET center, the safe operation of one’s vehicle was validated in a short twenty minute appointment.

My parents separated when I was becoming a teenager, their four children born in five years. Partly because of the hard times, my father struggled supporting us. Hand-me-down cars were typical in our home, my sister Anita shared her 1982 Ford EXP, a burnt orange car that kept Ma from taking the bus to one of three jobs, and the grocery.  Said differently, there were zero excess dollars to spend on an annual VET inspection and likely repair bill, nevertheless she routinely complied with the law to verify emission levels and to certify the vehicle.

Fortunately, when that less-than-efficient car did sputter and fail, there were straightforward policy mechanisms to extend the length of the test period, citing hardship for example; I recently stumbled onto my letters requesting VET extensions annually, even after moving to Minneapolis to attend graduate school in physics.

The bottom line is that with honest responsibility demonstrated, it was fairly easy to get an extension and keep driving legally on public roads. There might have been a sticker that was attached to the license plate to announce certification broadly. Moreover, trucks used by licensed businesses were exempt from testing, suggesting thoughtful, even non-onerous latitudes were built into the policy. 

The point to be made is that there was a law created because for-whatever-reasons we could not trust our neighbors to maintain the efficiency of their automobiles, and who seemed removed from the collective effects of car ownership, “oh shucks, what problem could my little old car have on noxious pollution and health the good people living in Louisville?”  When multiplying 0.8 cars per capita by the metro population of 612,890 (using 2014 census data) for the integrated effect, plenty. [4]

This morning a news story captured my attention: last year, just short of 50,000 people were killed by guns in the United States, a horrible and large number. For perspective, these include homicide, murder, unintentional, and defensive use. For 2023, mass shootings and mass murders totaled 339 (as of June 19), from all of 2022 that sum is 682. [5]

For the dead 50,000, there are another four who were directly affected by the loss of their loved one, and another ten who were at least moved spiritually when attending the funeral services. That is, an estimated 750,000 were affected by gun violence in one year. Let’s call that estimate 1,000,000 annually, a horrible and large number.

A logic statement is that gun violence touches many and is a recurring problem in the United States, and for-whatever-reasons we can not trust our neighbors to maintain an efficiency at owning and using guns, and now must create laws to ensure (societal) function and safety.

Like the VET centers and the multi-point inspections, we propose Gun Ownership and Use (GOU) centers, where good people are certified for ownership and use, those ignorant to the goals of the program are enlightened, and gun ownership for bad people is squelched.  

Who among us would comply with a gun certification process? Why of course gun owners – if you do not own a gun you need not jump that hurdle, but then again, you might elect to proactively be certified for ownership; for example there are numerous passport carriers who do not travel abroad.

To be clear, the proposal is that there would be regular checkup on gun owners analogous to the practice of monitoring emissions and safety of cars, because we can not trust people to manage themselves.

If you want to own a locker full of guns, fine, that is your right, and my right is that gun owners schedule an appointment at the GOU to make sure the metaphoric “tires, lights, windshield wipers, and brakes” are functioning properly. That is, when the rubber hits the road, you can see the realities of ownership, and stop transgressions personally, collectively, and possibly you might influence others to similarly good practices.

The basic ideas is that people would meet with a trained professional to verify their responsibilities associated with gun ownership.  The GOU could be populated with trained bachelor degree-ed psychology majors to save costs so as to not constrain the already taxed psychologists who are working through an unprecedented mental health crisis in our nation, allowing for a more seamless growth of a new practice. 

For the first decade of a gun ownership law, costs could be fully absorbed by State governments, funded through block grants by the Fed; devising the funding model and the program’s ROI is better left to law makers. 

Certification levels could be decided on: own one hunting rifle, no problem, own three hunting rifles and two pistols, that’s okay, or twelve of both, or any quantity, go for it, after passing a “multi-point inspection,” a person’s certification for gun ownership might be reported on a drivers or hunting licenses. 

In service military, police, fire, and ambulance personnel, pilots, even TSA-certified fliers could receive expedited gun ownership certification.

Suppose you are that retiring sheriff who has been collecting guns to sell as a supplement to your retirement years, you’d receive a stamp of approval to own some range of guns: 1-3, 3-10, 10-24, 25-100, 100+ for example. The point, ensure latitude in the law’s implementation. 

It might prove that visiting the GOU annually is too frequent, similar to obtaining a boating license once per three years, or like a passport once a decade. The more times I see the dentist for checkups, the better my dental health is with implications for my overall health, but going once per month is superfluous. Again, let the people and law makers sort out and monitor the effective frequencies.

My parting shot: ensure reasoned gun ownership for hunting wild game and for protecting one’s life and personal property by ensuring operation and safety of guns for the masses through regular center-led evaluations and certifications.

Five

Five fingers tall, curious or rejecting, as a circular gold salute, or as a siren blaring red, a gesture shaped by a contoured conversation which rendered music and people quiescent; an unanticipated rendezvous, again, possibly the fifth. 

Yet another colocation, this with a swift response, ten fingers tussle, words hidden, interplay sequestered, a story hinted; with respectful pause, then latency, four turned to two, then, you left, nothing said.

Entranced from what was once your perch, silhouettes crossing the darkened lot peer back with curious cadence, an anchored Hepburn skip, then spilling westward aside wooden blinds, stardust lost.

A scenic river tour now urbanized, music sought, rolling pedals over and over, winds calm, eyes open, singing, we got to get ourselves back to the garden.

Oak Grows

Sensing the young oak tree grow the day after a soaking rain, its leaves erect and capturing the blue-skied sunshine, he reckons his curation as essential, and inevitably, lost in time.

Nature Prevails

As our river house sees nearly annual snow-melt floods, the lowland becoming long soaked in murky waters, and when retreated, a muddy mess. With warmed air, deep-rooted grasses and indigenous ferns sprout first, claiming the land and shunting the growth of non-native weeds that had previously encroached the area. Later, with mild winds, top-heavy box elders crash to the ground, roots rotted by the repeated floods, nature prevails.

Lady

The beautiful, so committed to beauty, you no exception.

Eyes unmatched, amber pockets bursting sparkles from within a green glow,
illuminated by the sun steeply setting over my shoulders.

A smile relentless, pearls set among a broad crimson suppleness.
Your face, geometric.

This is what all see first, many mesmerized, some eternally grateful.

Abundance

With more, fear of loss, conservatism, not the relax of shared abundance.
With more, anxious pride, superiority, not humility nor secured comfort.
With more, righteousness is assembled to preserve their perfect world from dilution.
With more, new wealth segregate and climb into deserve, church fails.
With more, we seek greed, hate overwhelms, brotherhood transforms to selfish populism.

Serendipity

Staring up and dodging water droplets which fall as condensate, outside temperatures very cold
Guarding, resourceful, a desire to meaningfully contribute to a curious solution
Scratching ponder, a picture captures a moment with celebrity backdrop
Aside in a paused stand, politeness is manifested, then into the brown warmth a deep dive
Both iris glisten with a twinkle, a discovered past anticipated
Intentionally, interaction follows into a regular pattern of discovery, fingered words distant
Method new and mellow, into life’s return the slow goal.

My World Spins

My world spins
    sun illuminating fractionally
heated surface alternating obscuring clouds
    weather pulsing change, predictable(?)
dormant days, followed by extreme
    life folds into the available
inertia barely controlled
    patterns ephemeral
jet stream, eddied dissolve, stochastic
    elbows bleed in abrasion
death managed said the fool
    yet skies whisper inevitable
soon rises sun, daylight
    shattered, a tree branch splashes river running
floated drift,
    hosting the occasional reptile sunning
utility until tumble falls
    soaked, buoying deeper, soggy deteriorent
electricity gravity agents apparent
    particularly as lightnings strike.

First Flight

Sliding from the top of a large white balled light post, a robin’s perch precarious,
Squawk, squawwk, squawwwk, another two birds work distraction from nearby branches.

Stray-kitty ponders the toy morsel, plump from its Ma’s attentive feeding, worms abundant in this riverside haven, fresh rains have top soil moistened for the savvy winged workers.

Realizing an apparent ground fodder, I whisk the tired but wide-eyed cat from its playful perch looking down atop the hill and the young robin, he seemingly content to let the frightened youngster alone.

Wondering if bruised or maimed, I make periodic health checks between coffee sips, chihuahuas wrestle, and some email, the morning sun shining obliquely on this hallowed solstice day.

Mom now continues mild mannered chirping on a branch above, a blunted worm hanging from its mandible, but the babe now not obvious, however her tenor convinces me that all is fine.

img_0025.jpg

The grass cut, winters sugars exhausted, the shallow plane making for either small two legged or four legged critters a chance to bounce uninhibited across the cool damp morning grass, mom dropping down to the base of a favorite box elder, bushed heavily by spring growth, that worm an offering to the youngster who emerges unscathed.

Popping up and down with relative joy, baby bird wanders in and out of the sun and into tall green grasses, mom demonstrating flight to a vertical branch in a nearby tender pile which awaits a blazing, her cajoling bit by bit, by day’s end, nubile junior has become a master flyer.

Eventually

Eventually, all fossil fuels on Earth will be consumed, their gaseous byproducts absorbed in the atmosphere, some sequestered to the seas.

Eventually, all fissile elements on Earth will be depleted, technology designs slowing that depletion,  reliance on local energy innovated with necessity.

Eventually, the Earth will not support the requirements of the human species, as procuring water, air, and food become challenging, persons of higher class will manage self importance as rights that dominate.

Eventually, the meek will become blessed and the Earth will be their’s to inherit.

Eventually, the Sun will cycle in death to engulf the Earth, all memory lost to those generations whose progeny escape to other habitation.

Eventually.

Trumpeters

Flying high, wing span impressive, organized as a vee, their path intercepting, the work to get to this stage of the journey, the last hundred miles, not by chance.

Instinct and intuition alone is not enough to manage any of the abrupt delays in a trek north, gravity, fluid dynamics, and magnetism in control.

Gone now from overhead, their trumpeting persisting in a blue chilled sky, a river thaws below, Poppy circling as a toy bone is thrown repeatedly, his energy perpetual.

Blue blue eyes bright, watching watching the sky above, curiously resolving, knowing knowing that time stands still when darkness appears, wide eyed he let’s go into the pause of time.

R.I.P. Pappa

Almost December

The air so damp, a mild breeze, barely
Resonation between the tree’s tentacles, electric
A condensate of precarious drops, large
Falling with candor, below branch only, cadence
No signal of ice, the river racing north, nearby.

Sunlight Dancing

The constant harmony of the river’s waters, reflected sunlight dancing briskly, vaguely green and resilient leaves clingingly flutter in an unusual warm November breeze, not a cloud seen, soon stars bright above a crescent moon, mars on her shoulder.

Trotting Time

She runs, runs erect, runs direct, her cadence steady
Rhythm spawning contemplation, a mind focused
Past the blue spruce grove, alone, her dark two-tone drobe blending in ghost-like
There, in our presence, this unfamiliar runner trotting time away, step by step.

Skate

Doors of the rail car the only restriction, boyz emerging as opened, clunk click click, the eight bearings humming drag then a hook jump schradtch a thudded landing, smiling then circling back for another run, his buddy schradtch’n a thwack pumped he pounces on the board stopping as a Father and son snatch their sounding board / E line Denver

Moons of Jupiter

First four, then three, now four.
Moons or cats or both?

Four then five, now six.
Deer crossing the Red River, their wet white tails dancing and reflecting a brilliant sun as they jet, foraging on an urban landscape now transforming to green.

Native Sun

A product of environment, triggered intellect in response to thoughtful solutions, patient and aggressive, but waiting, operating under restraint imposed by the normalized, commitment to country preceded by his accumulated travels throughout his home state, cities dispersed rurally, most in advance of global connectivities, a back turned to naive hope, as a native sun’s capacities are lost, progress slowed.

Supernova

From the medium a protostar coalesces, driven by gravity. In its environmental assemblages, albeit extended in time, pressure builds at its core, eventual is a hydrogen furnace, then balanced competition between that gravitational pressure and its outward radiation, thus are the majority of stars.

For an eternity, that assemblage of substance is the fuel that fuses into time, or age, for life as a star is ephemeral on a universal scale that our minds struggle feebly to digest. ironcore

For billions of years, she burns, gathering and expending mass, burning hotter, eventual is helium, carbon, oxygen, sodium, neon, magnesium, silicon, sulfur, phosphorous, and silicon, then in a finale: a core of iron and nickel.

For the magnificent, that core bouncing to a colossal giant and then to a cooling dwarf, or into a super-colossal nova as an explosive reseeding of its progenitor, permeating waves which jitter the interstellar medium and inseminating its progeny.

Two Moons of Saturn

Discovered rediscovery, with metropolitan flare, slender beauty erect and alert, recognition even curiosity served by intermittent occultations, we seem to agree.

Does that door work?

The piled snow crunching under his feet while trotting across the span o’er the Red in search of music, his therapy.

 Dione Rhea Occultation
Dione_Rhea_Occultation.jpg

Equinox

That balance of light and dark, that season that hastens preparation, on that day the drummer and his indigenous chant, complemented by bell ringing, sound to the heaven containing universe, as we each stand facing on the perimeter of the medicine wheel, participating in the ascension to those heavens where all essence returns to be mixed eternally with those who have gone before, anticipating those who follow, as the sun sets in a distant clear sky.

medwheel_vcsu.jpeg