What could explain the gallium anomaly? • Hacker News Board

Re: What could explain the gallium anomaly?

#31

Post by Terr_ » Sat, Jul 13, 2024, 12:49 AM UTC

sterlind wrote: post #22

CamperBob2 wrote: post #2

Photo caption: In the lab that houses the BEST experiment, fish serve as an early warning system about any leaking radiation. Never change, Russia. Never change.

coal miners carried canaries to warn of CO. chemical weapons workers brought bunnies in cages to monitor nerve gas leaks. it's an old tradition - it's simple, and it works. though why not Geiger counters for radiation? there must be a reason.

I'm no nuclear physicist, but a theory to try out:

1. The leak scenario they're concerned about is an alpha emitter within water, which-- unlike gamma rays and Geiger counters--is harder to detect remotely, since the water serves as effective shielding for anything but microscopic distances.

2. Permanent resident fish serve as a kind of long-term accumulator for dissolved amounts that would otherwise be too hard to detect.

3. The concern isn't so much immediate risks to human health, but rather how any slow leak or discrepancy might compromise the experiment.

Re: What could explain the gallium anomaly?

#32

Post by lossolo » Sat, Jul 13, 2024, 12:54 AM UTC

CamperBob2 wrote: post #2

Photo caption: In the lab that houses the BEST experiment, fish serve as an early warning system about any leaking radiation. Never change, Russia. Never change.

Did you know that mussels and clams are sensitive to changes in water quality and can absorb pollutants? They are often used as bioindicators to detect harmful substances like heavy metals and toxins in the water. They are used in United States and in Europe to check if water is clean.

Re: What could explain the gallium anomaly?

#33

Post by easygenes » Sat, Jul 13, 2024, 12:54 AM UTC

addaon wrote: post #16

Terr_ wrote: post #4

> sterile neutrinos It's funny when one encounters serious real-world discussion on something previously seen as sci-fi technobabble. In this case, I'm thinking of the Destiny universe, such as this apocalyptic alert from a military AI. [0] > Multiple distributed ISR assets report a TRANSIENT NEAR EXTRASOLAR EVENT. Event duration ZERO POINT THREE SECONDS. Event footprint includes sterile neutrino scattering and gravi…

Google is (still) a great tool for this sort of conversion. It comes up with just under 58 barrels: https://www.google.com/search?q=57+tonnes+%2F+%286.1+g%2Fcm%...

My preference for this on the web is Wolfram Alpha: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=57+tonnes+%2F+%286.1+g%...

(note I've slightly changed the prompt to match the "drums" OP used instead of barrels. This avoids the issue other child mentions of ambiguous units, as it clearly states the volume of drum it's using and gives options for others (e.g. the international 200L instead of the US 208L/55 GAL).

Another option which I wouldn't inherently trust to get the calculation just right, but is good for explaining the process if you can fact-check it is ChatGPT-4o: https://chatgpt.com/share/ead07fff-8d55-4147-a742-6e19b26f1e...

Re: What could explain the gallium anomaly?

#34

Post by ahartmetz » Sat, Jul 13, 2024, 12:59 AM UTC

floxy wrote: post #26

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that the only possible sterile neutrino? Because if I recall correctly, a right chiral neutrino cannot change into one of the other types, because of the chirality. (That's why it's "sterile".) So either they aren't produced by beta decay, or they are but they can't be captured by gallium, or we're seeing a sterile neutrino in a different sense. ("Sterile" because it can't interact with gallium, but not sterile du…

>gallium->germanium should emit a neutrino, not absorb one. Neutron-Neutrino interaction? https://www.vivaxsolutions.com/physics/feynman-diagrams.aspx

Emitting an antiparticle is (in Feynman diagrams at least) the same as absorbing a particle. IIRC, for neutrinos the anti aspect isn't that important because they don't quickly annihilate with regular matter and they have no electrical charge.

I even seem to remember that the most commonly produced neutrinos are antineutrinos (so the anti aspect is more fundamental than a convention for each particle type).

Re: What could explain the gallium anomaly?

#35

Post by hinkley » Sat, Jul 13, 2024, 1:12 AM UTC

lossolo wrote: post #32

CamperBob2 wrote: post #2

Photo caption: In the lab that houses the BEST experiment, fish serve as an early warning system about any leaking radiation. Never change, Russia. Never change.

Did you know that mussels and clams are sensitive to changes in water quality and can absorb pollutants? They are often used as bioindicators to detect harmful substances like heavy metals and toxins in the water. They are used in United States and in Europe to check if water is clean.

I remember someone creating a sensing system to see if the shells were open or closed. Given enough mussels, the odds of them all closing at once due to random chance instead of pollution drops to zero.

Re: What could explain the gallium anomaly?

#36

Post by hinkley » Sat, Jul 13, 2024, 1:14 AM UTC

Etheryte wrote: post #11

dylan604 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't get them all right. To be fair, they used pencils while NASA spent time and money to have a pen that writes in 0g.

This is a myth, using a pencil in space isn't clever or thrifty, it's a disaster waiting to happen. The graphite from pencils breaks off in small fragments while writing and the fragments can create shorts in electronics and to top it off they're also flammable. None of those are properties you want to bring into a spacecraft.

And we licensed the pens from a dude who spent a fortune developing them.

Re: What could explain the gallium anomaly?

#37

Post by labster » Sat, Jul 13, 2024, 1:35 AM UTC

PaulHoule wrote: post #15

ars wrote: post #3

Would sterile neutrinos as an oscillation really change anything about dark matter? The total mass of neutrinos doesn't change, just the lepton number.

Sterile neutrinos could also be a lot heavier than regular neutrinos, those kind of sterile neutrinos are ideal candidates for explaining dark matter and the matter-antimatter asymmetry https://arxiv.org/abs/1303.6912 Just as I am disappointed that "global warming" changed into the more ambiguous "climate change", I'm a little disappointed that the "right-handed neutrino" has turned into the "sterile neutrino". It's…

As a climatologist, I can tell you that we switched to “climate change” because it’s more precise. “Global” in global warming is not the “universal” sense of global, because not everywhere on Earth warms equally, and some places may even cool with mean global warming. Global climate change implies that the averages and ranges are changing. The phenomenon is best measured in statistics.

(Also as a climatologist I have no idea what the handedness of neutrinos even means. Something with spin?)

Re: What could explain the gallium anomaly?

#38

Post by labster » Sat, Jul 13, 2024, 1:44 AM UTC

CamperBob2 wrote: post #23

sterlind wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

coal miners carried canaries to warn of CO. chemical weapons workers brought bunnies in cages to monitor nerve gas leaks. it's an old tradition - it's simple, and it works. though why not Geiger counters for radiation? there must be a reason.

If there's enough CO to kill a canary, you still have time to get to safety. If there's enough nerve gas to kill a rabbit, you still have time to get to safety. If there's enough radiation to kill a fish, you're a walking dead man... and the 'walking' part is temporary.

If you teach a man a fish, he will eat for one lifetime. If you give a man a radioactive fish, he will eat for many half-lives.

Re: What could explain the gallium anomaly?

#39

Post by LeifCarrotson » Sat, Jul 13, 2024, 2:31 AM UTC

hinkley wrote: post #35

lossolo wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you know that mussels and clams are sensitive to changes in water quality and can absorb pollutants? They are often used as bioindicators to detect harmful substances like heavy metals and toxins in the water. They are used in United States and in Europe to check if water is clean.

I remember someone creating a sensing system to see if the shells were open or closed. Given enough mussels, the odds of them all closing at once due to random chance instead of pollution drops to zero.

This Tom Scott video?

https://youtu.be/i0RkEs3Xwf0

Clams at 2:22.

Re: What could explain the gallium anomaly?

#40

Post by qup » Sat, Jul 13, 2024, 2:34 AM UTC

dudinax wrote: post #27

CamperBob2 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there's enough CO to kill a canary, you still have time to get to safety. If there's enough nerve gas to kill a rabbit, you still have time to get to safety. If there's enough radiation to kill a fish, you're a walking dead man... and the 'walking' part is temporary.

Maybe the fish get less shielding.

Maybe it's concentrated in his water