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What could explain the gallium anomaly?

quantamagazine.org

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Re: What could explain the gallium anomaly?

#41

Post by crazygringo »

sterlind wrote: post #21
Etheryte wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

dumb question but how well do sharpies work in space? the ink diffuses through the felt tip - that doesn't require gravity. wouldn't that work pretty well? also crayons seem like a better bet than pencils - they're still flammable and prone to flaking but at least they're not conductive.

Sharpies and markers generally run out waaay quicker than pens or pencils. They also dry out if you're not careful, and dry out temporarily if you use them for more than a few minutes at a time.

Crayons just aren't dark enough, and are too wide. Accurately reading numbers and symbols written in crayon at a normal handwritten size is not something I want to do. Not to mention the constant sharpening.

Re: What could explain the gallium anomaly?

#42

Post by CamperBob2 »

postalrat wrote: post #28
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.

What if you have a potential worrisome alpha emitter already in water. Keeping some fish in that water might give you heads up when something is going wrong.

Then, lacking the availability of an ISO-standard fish, you should probably use a scintillator or surface-barrier detector. Like everyone else who has to deal with such matters.

Re: What could explain the gallium anomaly?

#43

Post by hinkley »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #39
hinkley wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I believe Tom is the second time I heard of this, as was the experience of a number of his chattier viewers.

Re: What could explain the gallium anomaly?

#44

Post by kadoban »

labster wrote: post #37
PaulHoule wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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

Indeed, it's the relation of spin to linear momentum of the particle.

Re: What could explain the gallium anomaly?

#45

Post by geuis »

bawolff wrote: post #29

> While Russia’s invasion of Ukraine “has complicated things,” Elliott said, the collaboration between the U.S. and Russia on BEST is still ongoing, for now. Nice to hear in these uncertain times.

How is that "nice"? The fact that 3 years in we are still collaborating with Russia on the ISS and in other scientific programs is deeply disturbing. I get that the ISS is a special circumstance and a difficult knot to unravel. That's an extremely unique situation and it's not worth digging into at length for this situation. Life support onboard for all occupants relies on a continuing collaboration.

Beyond the ISS situation we should have completely cut all ties with Russia. They have killed hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians. Stolen children, assaulted women, and killed Ukrainian elderly and children. Not even digging into their internal recruitment policies, but the way they drag innocent Russian civilians into supporting their invasion is worth its own war crimes investigation.

Yes, this experiment is interesting and it's intriguing to me. But it's not "nice" when a few physicists are getting results at the expense of all the collective suffering going on right now.

I'm generally pragmatic about things, but in this situation cooperation is entirely uncalled for.

Meanwhile the US ignores joint efforts with China. They (China) have some interesting things going on right now. For an international space station, it's awful that a Chinese crew hasn't even been invited to the ISS despite allowing numerous rich folks going up for a week long vacation.

To be clear, I'm NOT supporting China. Their government is antithetical to a free society and is deeply partnered with Russia, N. Korea, and other states hostile to the EU and US.

But they are a major player in humans in space, and it's important to engage them at that level. Again, the ISS is a unique scenario.

Re: What could explain the gallium anomaly?

#46

Post by jpgvm »

geuis wrote: post #45
bawolff wrote: post #29

> While Russia’s invasion of Ukraine “has complicated things,” Elliott said, the collaboration between the U.S. and Russia on BEST is still ongoing, for now. Nice to hear in these uncertain times.

How is that "nice"? The fact that 3 years in we are still collaborating with Russia on the ISS and in other scientific programs is deeply disturbing. I get that the ISS is a special circumstance and a difficult knot to unravel. That's an extremely unique situation and it's not worth digging into at length for this situation. Life support onboard for all occupants relies on a continuing collaboration. Beyond the ISS s…

The problem is these joint scientific efforts were and continue to be effective tools to diffuse more dangerous possibilities.

In case you have forgotten Russia is still the 2nd largest nuclear power and their arsenal is enough to eliminate pretty much all life on Earth.

The war in Ukraine is terrible but don't underestimate how much worse things could get. If things do get worse it's back channels like space collaboration/UN/other symbolic things that can keep people talking enough to not end up cleansing the Earth in nuclear fire. Just because those things are ineffective at stopping a proxy war doesn't mean they aren't worth doing.

For the same reason I also agree that China should be welcomed into the international space community. They are flying state of the art rockets and have their own modern space station... you couple that with the fact they too are an increasingly powerful military nation then more collaboration rather than less is the way to go.

Re: What could explain the gallium anomaly?

#47

Post by geuis »

jpgvm wrote: post #46
geuis wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that "nice"? The fact that 3 years in we are still collaborating with Russia on the ISS and in other scientific programs is deeply disturbing. I get that the ISS is a special circumstance and a difficult knot to unravel. That's an extremely unique situation and it's not worth digging into at length for this situation. Life support onboard for all occupants relies on a continuing collaboration. Beyond the ISS s…

The problem is these joint scientific efforts were and continue to be effective tools to diffuse more dangerous possibilities. In case you have forgotten Russia is still the 2nd largest nuclear power and their arsenal is enough to eliminate pretty much all life on Earth. The war in Ukraine is terrible but don't underestimate how much worse things could get. If things do get worse it's back channels like space collabo…

Glad we agree on China at least.

I highly disagree about Russia being a modern nuclear power. China and Israel are really the only countries that have the modern infrastructure required to maintain significant nuclear presences other than the US. Russia today is mostly living off of the remnants of pre-1985 Soviet energy infrastructure investments.

They have some nuclear capability, but it's far, far below what the US still maintains. Sadly even a reduced capacity is still far above what's needed to mess things up.

Re: What could explain the gallium anomaly?

#48

Post by bawolff »

geuis wrote: post #45
bawolff wrote: post #29

> While Russia’s invasion of Ukraine “has complicated things,” Elliott said, the collaboration between the U.S. and Russia on BEST is still ongoing, for now. Nice to hear in these uncertain times.

How is that "nice"? The fact that 3 years in we are still collaborating with Russia on the ISS and in other scientific programs is deeply disturbing. I get that the ISS is a special circumstance and a difficult knot to unravel. That's an extremely unique situation and it's not worth digging into at length for this situation. Life support onboard for all occupants relies on a continuing collaboration. Beyond the ISS s…

I hate the russian regime and what its doing to ukraine too.

Still there is something comforting about putting aside our differences, petty and otherwise, to do science.

After all, its not like the Russian scientists involved personally ordered the invasion.

Re: What could explain the gallium anomaly?

#49

Post by eigenket »

kadoban wrote: post #44
labster wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> (Also as a climatologist I have no idea what the handedness of neutrinos even means. Something with spin?) Indeed, it's the relation of spin to linear momentum of the particle.

Its not quite that, the thing you're describing is called helicity. Helicity and chirality are closely related, they're the same if your particle is massless for example, but for massive particles they aren't the same.

Imagine I have a particle which is spinning in the same direction as its linear momentum (so positive helicity) but then I speed myself up really fast so now I'm going faster than it. Its linear momentum (to me) appears to have switched sign but its spin hasn't so the helicity has flipped.

Chirality is a more complicated thing which avoids this "problem" with helicity. Chirality doesn't change when the observer changed velocity.

Re: What could explain the gallium anomaly?

#50

Post by qnleigh »

Is there any reason to think that Gallium would be a particularly good source of sterile neutrinos? Or is it more that if regular neutrinos oscillate into sterile neutrinos, then this would be the first experiment that could detect so at this scale?
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