The Enigmatic Neutrino

• Autores: Don Lincoln, Clarissa Roe, Tia Miceli
• Localización: The Physics Teacher, ISSN 0031-921X, Vol. 53, Nº. 6, 2015, pág. 331
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Through a century of work, physicists have refined a model to describe all fundamental particles, the forces they share, and their interactions on a microscopic scale. This masterpiece of science is called the Standard Model. While this theory is incredibly powerful, we know of at least one particle that exhibits behaviors that are outside of its scope and remain unexplained. These particles are called neutrinos and they are the enigmatic ghosts of the quantum world. Interacting only via the weak nuclear force, literally billions of them pass through you undetected every second. While we understand that particular spooky behavior, we do not understand in any fundamental way how it is that neutrinos can literally change their identity, much as if a house cat could turn into a lion and then a tiger before transitioning back into a house cat again.