Experiment confirmed famous physics model
Date: Thursday, April 19, 2007 @ 22:47:59 UTC
Topic: Science
Physicists can rest easy--the Standard Model of Particle Physics is
still in effect. More than 100 MIT students and professors jammed into
Room 35-225 on Wednesday, April 11, to hear the long-anticipated
results of a particle detection experiment designed to produce evidence
that would confirm or reject the model, which outlines the elements of
particle physics.
MIT postdoctoral associate Jocelyn Monroe, who worked on the
experiment, prolonged the suspense, revealing the results about half an
hour into her talk. The outcome? The standard model is still safe: The
experiment confirms the model's prediction that there are only three types of neutrinos (tiny elementary particles that are components of atoms).
Some of the assembled crowd seemed disappointed that the foundation of particle physics had not been upended.
"This was such a big question. It would have changed everything" if
they found evidence for a fourth neutrino, Monroe said last week, after
her lecture.
Experiments done in the 1990s at the Liquid Scintillator Neutrino
Detector (LSND) at the Los Alamos National Laboratory offered strong
indirect evidence for the existence of a fourth neutrino, but the
results were controversial. So another experiment, the Booster Neutrino
Experiment (MinibooNE) was launched in late 2002 to try to replicate
the results.
"It was very important to confirm or refute the LSND result," said
Monroe, a Pappalardo Fellow who arrived at MIT last September and
worked on the MinibooNE project as a graduate student at Columbia
University.
...
More: http://www.physorg.com/news96217250.html
Source: MIT
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