## Sunday, August 28, 2011

### MINOS Update IV

I have just been told that some of the new MINOS data includes (so called) antineutrinos from the antineutrino beam, but the paper does not appear to be on the arxiv yet. Hopefully it will appear soon. Here is the relevant plot from their website: If it is true that the pure $\overline{\nu}$ data indicates a much lower value for $\Delta m^2$ then we have been incorrect about quite a few things, to say the least! Well, it is only progress that matters.

Now if the new data are correct, what would we have to give up? The CMB, certainly. As for the braids, we would have to swap the crossings so that the neutrinos were paired up in the same way as the other leptons. That looks neater, at least. At present, though, I find it very, very hard to believe that the old results could be wiped out so conveniently, despite the nice graph.

1. Moreover, the conjugated Koide phase is still suggestive, in the context of ribbon diagrams. Is it a way of obtaining the CMB temperature seemingly independently of the neutrino masses? Yes, it would be. Hmmm.

2. Then all the observed particles (including quarks) would be described neatly by the same braid pairings. The mirror braids would still exist as a piece of the EW puzzle. The non zero $\theta_{13}$ phase would make the neutrinos a lot more like the quarks, as suggested by quark lepton complementarity etc.

3. Note also that there are still a number of unexplained anomalies from the Tevatron, the asymmetric $p \overline{p}$ machine. These probably require mirror physics to understand.

4. Gee, this whole MINOS business stinks. Everyone (who counts) told them they were wrong, earlier this year, and they damned well believed them. It looks fishy. So now no matter what their data do, we have to wait for another experiment to decide the matter.

5. Well, MINOS have almost doubled the amount of data (to $2.95 \times 10^{20}$ POT) so perhaps these statistics are believeable, after all.

6. I dont see that it is a good reason to give up on the mirror antineutrino. You dont know the cross section it has with usual matter. It could be much lower than the usual neutrino.

7. Besides, this mirror neutrino seems to work like a manipulator of the weak force. It should take over the rule of the Higgs as the responsible for the unitarity of the WW scattering.

So, while the universe was opaque to usual electron neutrinos at a temperature 1MeV, the mirror version should require a temperature above 100GeV, that is, araound EW scale. So, another reason its cross section should be much smaller.

8. Oh, I agree, Daniel. I have no intention of giving it up. After all, the CMB comes from the mirror phase. See next post ...

9. P.S. My sincere apologies to the MINOS collaboration for all the swearing and cursing!