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RE: Unraveling neutrino anomalies with (a lot of) oil at MiniBooNe
I've often wondered how neutrinos are produced in beams and how scientists can direct them so precisely. Thanks for the explanation.
Joe
@joe.nobel
science fiction, fantasy, erotica
Thanks for passing by. To summarize, neutrino beams can be made by starting from a known reaction, and we then make sure that all the debris from that reaction are absorbed. One hence ends up with a beam containing only neutrinos.
But how do they get pointed from their source in (e.g.) Switzerland to a detector in Italy so precisely? And how can they tell that these particular ones are "your" neutrinos and not from some cosmic event or just from the sun?
The idea is to collimate the particles giving rise to neutrinos (pions) with magnets before they decay. In this way, the decay products (the neutrinos) will stay aligned within the beam.
There is a probability cosmic neutrinos are within the beam, bu this probability is very tiny. Remember, we need a very well defined energy, a very well-defined direction, etc.. This makes a lot of conditions.