The Mystery Of Neutrinos

This has been added to the cosmology theory on this blog, "The Theory Of Stationary Space".

Neutrinos are the particles that are produced in nuclear reactions. Long being a mystery, they were originally thought to be both without mass and without any electric charge, and able to pass through ordinary matter. It is now known that neutrinos actually do have some mass, if they had no mass or charge we likely would not be able to detect them at all.

The existence of neutrinos was originally conceived by Austrian physicist Wolfgang Pauli to explain an unaccounted imbalance in momentum during nuclear reactions. Neutrinos were actually discovered in 1956.

A neutrino is not an "original" particle. It is created only during nuclear reactions. It would not exist on it's own without these nuclear reactions. Neutrinos are produced by stars and by a star exploding in a supernova. They can be generated in particle accelerators. Neutrinos are also released by radioactive processes such as beta decay, which is the breaking down of a neutron into a proton by releasing an electron and a neutrino.

Neutrinos are in the same class of particles as electrons, and are known as leptons. In fact, there are three types of neutrino and each is associated with one of the three types of electron. The three electrons and their associated neutrinos make up the class of particles that are called leptons.

So a neutrino is a particle in the same class as electrons, except that a neutrino has an extremely slight mass and no net electric charge, unlike the electron with it's negative charge. But they are still such a mystery as to why they exist and what they accomplish in the grand scheme of things.

Ordinary matter consists of atoms which have electrons in orbitals around protons and neutrons. These electrons are just ordinary what we could call first generation electrons. But there are two heavier versions of electrons that can exist, but which are both short-lived. Mau electrons, or muons, could be called second-generation electrons. Tau electrons are heavier, but shorter-lived, still and could be called third-generation electrons.

These two heavier versions of the electron, but with the same charge as an ordinary electron, are known to be produced only by cosmic rays or particle accelerators. All three have their corresponding type of neutrino, and the six particles are what makes up the lepton family.

As it turns out, my cosmology theory has a simple explanation for what neutrinos are and how they come to be. Let's use K-capture, the crunching of an electron into a proton to create a neutron, and then a later reversal of the process by beta radioactive decay as an example.

During a supernova, the explosion of a large star, the tremendous energy released creates elements that would not exist otherwise. The sun is a second-generation star that, along with the Solar System, is made of matter that fell back together by gravity after the original stare exploded. The ordinary fusion process in stars only goes as far as iron. That is why iron is so abundant in the inner Solar System and why iron and lighter elements are exponentially more common than elements that are heavier than iron.

Elements that are heavier than iron have proportionally more neutrons relative to protons. This is necessary to hold the nucleus together against the mutual repulsion of the positively-charged protons. Neutrons in these heavier elements are "made" by the energy released by the supernova explosion. Electrons in low orbitals are crunched into protons to create neutrons in the process referred to as K-capture. Since the proton has a positive charge and the electron a negative charge, the two cancel out to the neutral charge of the neutron.

But many of these heavier elements, or certain isotopes of them, are not entirely stable. Isotopes are atoms with the same number of protons in the nucleus, which is what defines the element, but differing numbers of neutrons. These unstable atoms gradually break down into more stable configurations in the process known as radioactivity.

There are three types of radioactivity. Alpha is for a large atom to emit an alpha particle in order to gain more stability. An alpha particle is essentially a helium nucleus, two protons with two neutrons. Another type of radioactivity is gamma. This is releasing excess energy in the atom by electromagnetic radiation, known as gamma rays.

The third type of radioactivity is beta. That is the seeking of a more stable configuration by having a neutron emit an electron, that was originally forced into it by the energy of the supernova explosion, in order to change into a proton, which would make the atom the next highest one on the Periodic Table since the element is defined by the number of protons.

But this process of beta decay, which we are using for our example here, releases a neutrino as well as an electron. The mystery is where the neutrino comes from. Here is the explanation that my cosmology theory has to offer.

The electron has orbital energy when it is in it's orbital in the atom, before it is crunched into the proton. When the electron is pushed toward the nucleus, this orbital energy is released as radiation. That is why stars shine, because heavier atoms have many fewer electrons than the smaller atoms that they were crunched together from and, if the electrons are going to be crunched into protons to create the necessary neutrons, their orbital energy has to go somewhere.

From the altitude of it's orbital the nucleus has a positive charge, which is what holds the negatively-charged electron in it's orbital, but the charge of the nucleus is somewhat diffuse because there are many neutrally-charged neutrons among the positively-charged protons. But as the falling electron gets closer to the proton that it is going to be crunched into to form another neutron, the positive charge on it gets stronger because the neutrons of the nucleus are relatively further away, making the attractive positive charge facing the electron less diffuse than it was.

The electron thus accelerates relative to the velocity that it would be moving toward the nucleus if it's apparent diffuse positive charge had remained constant. This acceleration is energy, and energy has to be accounted for.

In my cosmology theory everything, both space and matter, is made of negative and positive electric charges.  The basic rules of these charges are that opposite charges attract while like charges repel. Matter is any concentration of like charges, space is a perfect checkerboard of alternating negative and positive charges.

But there is also energy and what energy ultimately does is overcome the repulsive force between like electric charges. Matter is defined as having mass and this mass is actually the energy that is holding the like charges together against their otherwise mutual repulsion. That is where the well-known mass-energy equivalence comes from, a certain amount of mass is equivalent to a certain amount of energy. This is what Einstein's famous formula, E = MC squared, is about, the equivalence of mass and energy.

So as the electron impacts the proton that it is joining with, what this extra energy caused by the necessary acceleration does is it goes to rearrange the alternating negative and positive electric charges of space so that it holds some like charges, both negative and positive, together. It actually creates matter from this extra energy.

Since it is created by the acceleration of the electron, before it meets the proton to form a neutron, this new matter takes the form of the electron. It is actually a replica of the electron. But it's mass is not that of the mass-energy equivalence within the electron, but only that of it's impact with the proton. This means that the new mass, although it has the form of the electron, has far less mass than the electron.

Since there is no reason for an electric charge imbalance, the new mass is sandwiched between the positively-charged proton and the negatively-charged electron, the new mass has no net electric charge. It's energy holds like charges together, but there are equal numbers of negative-to-negative and positive-to-positive bonds.

So the added energy caused by the acceleration as it nears the proton, because the positive charge that attracts it is now less diffuse then it was when the neutrons of the nucleus were at the same average distance from the electron as the protons, goes to create a new particle in the form of the electron but with far less mass and no net electric charge.

If the neutron should later break back into an electron and a proton by radioactive beta decay, there will be no reason for it to be incorporated into either the proton or the electron. It will be ejected as a particle on it's own.

If you were walking and left a footprint in the ground, the ground is the proton, your shoe is the electron, and the footprint is the neutrino.

Let's welcome the neutrino.