Except there is neutrino research going on. There's also a hypothesis that right-handed neutrinos are significantly more massive than their left-handed counterparts and are actually Dark Matter
this post was submitted on 26 Jan 2026
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something something seesaw something
If you don't understand the seesaw
The explanation for the observed light neutrino masses that involves massive right-handed neutrinos is called the "seesaw mechanism", since it kind of works like a seesaw (when mass of right-handed neutrinos goes up, the left-handed neutrino masses go down. Since observed neutrino masses are very very light, like ridiculously so, it was first though that they were massless until it was discovered that they oscillate between 3 flavours, which is only possible if they have mass, these right-handed neutrinos must be quite massive indeed)
For the record, I'm not a particle physicist of any kind and I got that information from a couple lectures that I watched that were about neutrino-related things.
The supersymmetry camp also thinks that right-handed sneutrinos (the theoretical supersymmetric partners of the neutrinos) could also be a candidate for dark matter. Note the prefixed s, that's how most of the supersymmetric partners of the observable fermions are named (squarks, selectrons, sneutrinos), while most of the supersymmetric partners of the observable bosons end with ino (photino, gravitino, and I'm pretty sure they call the partner of the W boson the Wino).
CoCain
Don't agree. There is so much interesting stuff happening in astrophysics. It's hard to choose one.
Vera Rubin going online is already giving us a huge boost to detecting near earth objects.
And neutrino astronomy is pretty much still in its infancy. There is still a lot to learn.
We're finding older and older objects every month. A potential bio signature has been found on Mars. We discovered our third Interstellar visitor. The next stage of the moon mission is about to launch people around the moon in the next few months. The crisis in cosmology is getting bigger and bigger.
Astrophysics is in a great shape.
Can you define crisis in cosmology please? Trying to learn.
Edit: PBS Space Time and Dr Becky have done some great videos about this on YouTube.
It's basically a disagreement on the expansion rate of the universe. Depending on how we measure it we get two vastly different numbers. And either our understanding of how the universe evolved after the Big Bang is wrong or we interpreted data from our telescopes incorrectly.
The hope with the launch of JWST was that it would go away with better data. But it seems to be getting worse.
So that makes it more and more likely that our universe formation theories are wrong. This does not mean that there wasn't a Big Bang. But it means that what we thought happened between the Big Bang and now isn't quite right.
So we can expect some great new theories in the next decades.
Thank you!
It's still a few years away, but so excited for the Europa Clipper to get to Jupiter.
Is anyone else concerned that Europa Clipper will get more stupider?
The Monolith did tell you not go to Europa. Just Sayan.
The message was not to land there. Clipper is doing a bunch of flybys (to minimize the time in Jupiter's radiation belt and extend the life of the probe). We're good.
Europa Clipper and JUICE will be exciting! I like JUICE a little bit more because of the name :)
Hi diddely ho, neuterino
We're trying, okay? It's not our fault they have all their preferences set to DNI.
i mean,if i was a neutrino, i'd have "humans DNI" in my twitter profile
Nah. Neutrinos and NEOs actually exist.
(It's funny because we can't stop them from passing straight through the pool.)
What about planet 9's likely discovery
Ammonite? aka 2023 KQ14?
Pluto is crying into it's pillow case right now. (If Pluto isn't a planet, then it's dubious that Ammonite is- for the same reasons.)
Very good video on it
Bigger than Neptune
i thought neutrinos were getting less attention because the huge japanese neutrino detector exploded
The implosion incident with Super-Kamiokande happened in 2001. Repairs were completed in 2006.
The implosion incident with Super-Kamiokande happened in 2001
"HOLY FUCK, an IMplosion?!"
One of these tubes – each of which contains a vacuum – is thought to have imploded as the detector was being refilled with water following maintenance work.
I guess "vacuum tube crushed by water" needed a bit of punching up.
It was a giant cascade of implosions. More than half of the tubes (7000+ tubes) imploded. One popped which caused a shockwave which in turn imploded its neighbors which popped and set off their neighbors…
Oof that sounds expensive...
Something like $30 million to replace them all. They put some plastic covers over the new ones to try and prevent it from happening again.
Well yes, one imploded, but the shock wave created by that first implosion then shattered 6600 of them.
did they see any since then?
/j
Do you want neutron weaponry? Because that’s how you get neutron WMDs
Dark matter is just matter hidden in darkness, hence we cannot see it. It's not some extraordinary substance. Mark my words.
it is because we invested so much in telescopes there was no budget for flashlights
Who downvoted this? 💀
Right. Wish people were more scientifically minded around here. My guess is just the most simple one, and I welcome challenge to it with the mark my words part.
There is evidence of matter that does not interact with electromagnetic waves (so light, UV, etc.), so we cannot see it, but we do see the gravitational lensing caused by it, meaning it does interact with gravity (the bending of light around something that has a lot of mass)
There's bazillions of different theories of what dark matter could be (since all we know is that it doesn't interact with electromagnetism but it does with gravity), theories include primordial black holes (mini black holes made in the early superhot and dense universe), new forms of neutrino (like massive right-handed neutrinos), supersymmetric particles, and loads of other hypothetical/new particles (axions, WIMPs, etc.)
Regular matter fits that description too, but saying it doesn't interact with light is not the best way to say it. It's giving an assumption, that it's a black body because we cannot see it with our current tech. The flash light responder of my first comment is ironic, because you can think of a dark night with a flash light failing to illuminate things perpendicular to the beam. Space is vast, and we know physics does some strange things depending of the scale (tiny or huge). Have you pondered any of these questions: If there was enough light to illuminate everything in the universe, would space look black? When you think about solar systems, do you imagine stars at the center of them? Have you thought about solar systems that do not have the critical mass to ignite a star? What if the percentage of dark matter lines up with percentage of solar systems without a star to illuminate nearby objects? Is there really a large planet out in the Oort cloud, or is there that much little rocks out there we cannot see? And, on top of all that, I know for a fact there isn't solid evidence for any explanation yet, but people will not be scientific and disregard anything that's not the popular meme. But again, that is the common reaction through out history of new theories, until they are proven definitively. Even then people will believe the old norms in the face of facts. MIT is famous in teaching to brainstorm ever single possible solution, no matter how dumb or weird it is, because it might actually not be later on. Science isn't about sticking to a popular belief and defending it only, as that will stifle progress. There are lots of things we don't fully understand, and that's okay, but the unknown can be scary (and we have seen conservatives do some awful stuff in fear of changing their world views). We don't fully understand gravity as a "force". There are drugs we don't fully understand what exactly happens in our body, but see the side effects. We don't fully understand how the brain works. DNA was mapped but understanding it is going to take a very long time with research. I knew the type of responses I would get for not saying the popular theory (But hoped I would pleasantly surprised with mindfulness). And I do mean theory in the scientific definition, but most people treat it as scientific laws. Have you notice how people talk about the big bang theory, like they been there and seen it, the conviction in the way it's spoken, using that background radiation as the main source. I welcome new evidence, and will change my guesses/hypotheses when it comes, as all scientifically minded should. I just think it's wrong to clinch on to popular beliefs and not properly lay out assumptions.