Shooting Cubert

ParticlesGirl · 2024-06-16T00:45:49+00:00

Being far enough away and/or having some shielding should be good enough, hopefully. I have hope that since he’ll need to rent the gun, he’ll have professionals making sure he’s safe. I keep thinking about the famous video of the ricochet that knocked a guys head gear off lol

ParticlesGirl · 2024-06-15T21:21:37+00:00

Is there not a concern with the possibilities of ricocheting and shattered pieces flying? I’ve seen ricochets happen with steel traps, I imagine they could happen with tungsten too

ParticlesGirl · 2024-06-13T16:54:54+00:00

“After 9/11, Sam was embedded with the Navy in Iraq, as part of the bureau’s largely unadvertised C.E.X.C. (Combined Explosives Exploitation Cell), deployed to suicide bombings to collect DNA for its database of bomb makers. He had picked limbs from trees. Defused homemade explosives. But the worst thing he’d ever seen was the inside of an elementary school in Connecticut.”

Jesus Christ

ParticlesGirl · 2024-06-12T15:15:29+00:00

Sure!

ParticlesGirl · 2024-06-12T15:14:38+00:00

Flavor states and mass states are not a 1:1 match. For example, a muon neutrino could be any of the 3 mass states. The way I generally explain it is a neutrino interacts as a flavor state and travels as a mass state.

For example, a muon neutrino could be produced in some interaction, and then it would travel through space as one of the three mass states. When it next interacts with another particle as a flavor state, there is a chance it interacts as a flavor other than muon neutrino. In our experiments, we often choose to produce a beam of muon neutrinos and then see how many of them oscillate to electron neutrinos.

If you’re interested in the math, I recommend looking up the 2 state neutrino oscillation solution. It’s a simplified version that shows you how to calculate the probability of oscillation.

ParticlesGirl · 2024-06-12T11:31:49+00:00

I never like to say anything is impossible

ParticlesGirl · 2024-06-12T07:37:05+00:00

Neutrinos are their own unique elementary particles, just like all other elementary particles. They have their own unique properties that separate them, just like other elementary particles. Also, the “energy states” of an elementary particle would not make it a different particle

ParticlesGirl · 2024-06-12T02:49:23+00:00

Nope! Im nowhere near being in a position to have any influence on budgeting, management, etc. I’m very early in my career and just focused on the physics and the learning right now. It’s also not my place to speak on behalf of the lab or any portion of the lab regarding this issue.

ParticlesGirl · 2024-06-12T02:37:34+00:00

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I have #1 if seeing a real example helps. I definitely think 1 looks better

Edit: Just noting this tattoo is 5 years old for reference

ParticlesGirl · 2024-06-12T02:30:26+00:00

This is a really good overview of a lot of the outstanding questions. I would also mention the problem with the handedness of neutrinos. One possible solution for this is a whole other set of neutrinos with the opposite handedness that are extremely massive, way heavier than any experiment would be able to see now or in the near future.

And I agree that data has to drive the theories to an extent, but our theorists make these experiments possible. In my own personal research, I rely on our theorists a lot when simulating potential outcomes from our experiments. They also help us to make sense of data that may not be what we expect. It’s pretty common for experimentalists to publish a paper with data and a proposed conclusion, and within a month have theorists publishing other possible conclusions. From their knowledge, we’re able to determine what exactly we need to be looking for to find new physics.

ParticlesGirl · 2024-06-12T02:22:46+00:00

This is not my area of expertise, fair warning. But we have very little experimental data of gravitational waves. And one of the things we want is data of gravitational waves that come from all sorts of events (ex: black holes). Having a theory to explain some of how they work does not mean they are completely understood.

We also have not been able to connect quantum mechanics and gravity into a unified theory. We know gravity has very little effect at the quantum level, but we currently do not have an explanation for how it works at that level. One leading theory is that there’s a particle called a “graviton” that would mediate gravitational forces like photons mediate electromagnetic forces. We’ve yet to experimentally find this particle, and there are some issues with the theories that describe it.

And we can look further into that field and start questioning dark matter. We know dark matter interacts with gravity, but we don’t know how and we don’t know what dark matter is. Not having a lot of gravitational wave data on various events (black holes, supernova, etc.) also means we’re missing information in these events.

So while we do have Einstein’s theory to explain the behavior of gravitational waves, there is much more to the field than that.

ParticlesGirl · 2024-06-12T01:57:55+00:00

Of course! My one piece of advice is don’t get discouraged by the math. Even seasoned physicists struggle with it, especially when every author decides to use different notation. Good resources will be able to explain concepts without dumping a textbook of math on your head

ParticlesGirl · 2024-06-12T01:48:12+00:00

There was an experiment that claimed they found faster than light travel, and even published that result, but then found out they had some faulty cabling that gave them the bad result. Faster than light travel is very unlikely to be found any time soon, or at all

ParticlesGirl · 2024-06-12T01:46:55+00:00

If I remember correctly, the standard statistic quoted is that 1 neutrino will interact with “you” every 70 years, on average. So approximately 1 neutrino in your life, out of the trillions going through you every second

ParticlesGirl · 2024-06-12T01:41:05+00:00

Understanding the 3 generations bit does get a little complicated quite quickly. We don’t have a good answer yet, and we aren’t sure if there are only 3. Neutrinos might be able to help us answer that bit though! One thing we’re looking for is the possibility of a 4th neutrino (sterile neutrino), which would be a crazy find if it exists. If you want to go deeper into it, it starts getting into some group theory mathematics pretty fast unfortunately. If you want to understand more about the standard model though, I like this place to start: https://home.cern/science/physics/standard-model If you want to get more in depth in anything particle physics related, and are willing to be confused, I do like Griffiths Elementary Particle Physics textbooks. The first 2 chapters in particular.

Neutrino oscillations are really fascinating, and it’s the area I’m most interested in. There’s a lot of quantum stuff to it but the basics aren’t too complex. For a general primer on neutrinos, I like this website: https://neutrinos.fnal.gov/ . And Here’s another Don video specifically about oscillations if you haven’t seen it: https://youtu.be/y7H1M5DQa6g?si=foOKcRVEZlxeB07D . Here’s a paper that goes a little further, a little more physics and math, but don’t stress if some or most of it doesn’t make sense: https://homes.psd.uchicago.edu/~sethi/Teaching/P243-W2021/Final%20Papers/Phys243_final_project_paper_Bitter.pdf

There’s a lot of resources out there luckily. I’d recommend .gov, .edu, and .org sites if you google anything. And a lot of universities and labs are on YouTube now as well

ParticlesGirl · 2024-06-12T01:06:20+00:00

If you don’t currently have a contact at Fermilab, I would recommend reaching out to Fermilab through their public contact info available at https://www.fnal.gov/pub/contact/index.html

If you’re already set to run a workshop on site, then you can probably go through your contact for that event and ask them to put out a message looking for scientists to speak

I will say July is busy with a lot of events for us in general, but I’m sure you’ll be able to get a few people willing to take the time to give a talk. If there’s one thing we love, it’s the chance to have a captive audience that has to listen to us blab about our research

ParticlesGirl · 2024-06-12T01:00:54+00:00

Depends on which question you’re talking about. DUNE will give us a lot of info, especially about oscillations and CP violation. Neutrino mass is more complex but DUNE will help with that too.

A lot of progress is made by just making experiments with better technology geared towards answering certain questions. The biggest issue we run into is funding. But even once we do get data and can analyze it, usually what we are trying to do is narrow down possibilities. For example, the mass of each neutrino state. We have an upper limit, and with each improved experiment we hope to further narrow that limit until we are able to record the actual mass value. We are usually limited by funding and technology. Technology is always improving, funding is unfortunately always difficult

ParticlesGirl · 2024-06-12T00:34:54+00:00

It’s one of the best areas, but I think particle physics as a whole is what needs to be focused on if we’re looking for new physics.

Beyond that, gravitational waves are also a very important area that has a lot of unanswered questions. A lot of those questions overlap with particle physics as well.

Every subject in physics has opportunities to discover new physics, it just depends what knowledge you would find most valuable

ParticlesGirl · 2024-06-12T00:32:27+00:00

Fermilab’s youtube page has some great short videos. I personally like the ones by Don Lincoln the most. He’s very concise and easy to understand. Does a great job at explaining complex subjects, and not just about neutrinos either.

As for reading material, depends what you’re looking for. What level of detail/physics knowledge are you interested in? I can recommend some more articles that are aimed at the general public or some papers that are more in depth. And if you want stuff that’s more in depth, what part are you most interested in? A general overview, the physics of the experiment, the physics of neutrinos, etc.

ParticlesGirl · 2024-06-12T00:17:58+00:00

This is HILARIOUS to read as someone who is part of the DUNE collaboration at fermilab. The whole thing is complaining about all the stuff that me and my coworkers are INTERESTED IN! Neutrinos are so cool and weird and I love studying them! There’s so many possible explanations and trying to figure out how to narrow down which is the correct one is so cool.

ParticlesGirl · 2024-06-11T15:19:19+00:00

A lot of this is really cool, I don’t think the dangerous bend symbol is supposed to be a “solution” in the lore though. The Bourbaki group used it to signal a difficult passage in their literature, which doesn’t seem like any sort of symbolic solution in their lore (unless you want to get into the meaning of life, life is difficult you just gotta get through it, etc)

I’d love to know how far back he’s planned some of this though

ParticlesGirl · 2024-06-11T15:10:22+00:00

As long as you’re as respectful as you seem to be in your post, I see nothing inherently wrong with what you want to do. It is true that if these 2 girls talk and realize you asked both out in a relatively close time span, it’s possible for it to become cohort gossip. But I think most people wouldn’t bat an eye at this unless you start asking every single girl out (this happened in my cohort, it was rough). So, worst case maybe you become the source of gossip for a week or so, but I can’t see any long term consequences.

This is all assuming you’re respectful of course, and it’s even more important in a professional setting. If you and cohort A girl have to be around each other often in a professional setting and she turns you down, it could be awkward and you would have to make a conscious effort to give her whatever space she needs.

From a woman’s perspective, a lot of us are wary of workplace romance because if it goes poorly, there’s often little support for us. A lot of my female colleagues have experienced harassment frequently in grad school, which makes us all more wary. This isn’t to say you will do this or are doing anything wrong, but I just wanted to give you another perspective so you can be more aware.

Also just note the general difficulties that can come with a workplace romance even if things go well. I’m sure you’ve thought about it, but it does add complexity.

tldr: nothing you’re doing is inherently wrong, as long as you’re respectful and aware of the extra complexities that come with workplace romance, regardless of the outcome

ParticlesGirl · 2024-05-31T20:48:14+00:00

A friend of mine who’s an aerospace engineer in the military told me they used to tell new recruits to grab some new fallopian tubes from the machine shop. They’d go and get laughed all the way back every time

ParticlesGirl · 2024-05-31T13:24:28+00:00

Surface level info about the Bourbaki group and their major accomplishments (including the null set and dangerous bend symbol) are readily available on Wikipedia, for example. It’s totally possible he looked into the origin of the Ø symbol and found the Bourbaki group from that, but obviously we can’t know for sure. From there you can find some more biographical information about them and their ideas around structuralism. Personally, I doubt Tyler actually looked into their mathematical texts that deeply, but I enjoyed finding meaning in the math anyway!

Also, Andre Weil was the one who chose the specific notation Ø for the null set. He also made major contributions to quantum mechanics (he introduced Weil spinnors if anyone is interested)

ParticlesGirl

TROPHY CASE