Wednesday, March 27, 2024

Quantum gravity constrained

Another of those article-headings I dislike came in. "Scientists on the hunt" at the mainline; blah blah question mark over at Science Daily. This one is about neutrinos being affected by quantum gravity. NOT

The neutrinos most people want come from, like, supernovae or quasars or neutronstar-mergers. Most neutrinos are simply created right above us when a hypervelocity ion ("cosmic ray") whacks our atmosphere. Luckily these hit us from all directions so, if the detector is somewhere nobody else lives - like our south pole - it can pick up neutrinos from through our earth. Even potentially the NORTH pole. Tom Stuttard's team pondered if, over 12700 kilometers, neutrinos might experience quantum gravity to the degree they could see it.

After a lot of blah blah and 300000 neutrinos later, the article finally allows Stuttard to admit the fact that we didn’t see them [effects]. It seems 12,700 km is insufficient km to notice a quantum gravity effect. That's... something, I concede. Doesn't really merit the headlines tho'.

Where would be a better producer of atmospheric neutrino? Saturn from the perspective of Mimas' orbit? A floater atop Uranus? Maybe that's where the next experiment needs setting up.

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