●Stories
●Firehose
●All
●Popular
●Polls
●Software
●Thought Leadership
Submit
●
Login
●or
●
Sign up
●Topics:
●Devices
●Build
●Entertainment
●Technology
●Open Source
●Science
●YRO
●Follow us:
●RSS
●Facebook
●LinkedIn
●Twitter
●
Youtube
●
Mastodon
●Bluesky
Become a fan of Slashdot on Facebook
Forgot your password?
Close
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
Load All Comments
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
/Sea
Score:
5
4
3
2
1
0
-1
More
Login
Forgot your password?
Close
Close
Log In/Create an Account
●
All
●
Insightful
●
Informative
●
Interesting
●
Funny
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
byAltesse ( 698587 ) writes:
Please explain for the layman that I am, how can these neutrinos be so energetic ? I thought neutrinos were very elusive particles that don't interact much with matter, and that's why they're so difficult to detect. With that much energy, these neutrinos should interact with matter and do heavy 'damage', àla cosmic particles, no ?
twitter
facebook
byGary Perkins ( 1518751 ) writes:
I can't explain completely, but I can say the energy level has most to do with the momentum of the particle. The faster a particle goes, the more energetic it is. It's a very simplistic explanation, and only one facet of what energizes a particle, but should work for laymen such as us. As for the interaction: if I remember right, neutrinos are very small. They tend to fly between the atoms, which at that scale are very far apart.
byAltesse ( 698587 ) writes:
Thanks ! It's a bit clearer now.
●nt threshold.
byAnonymous Coward writes:
One of the properties that IceCube takes advantage of is that at higher energies, neutrinos are much more likely to interact with matter and produce particles that it can detect. There's actually a specific energy close to the observed energy of these particles for an electron anti-neutrino where there is a spike in the probability to interact with electrons (6.3 PeV, the Glashow resonance).
byBrucelet ( 1857158 ) writes:
Because neutrinos don't interact much, there are very few ways for them to release their kinetic energy, even when there is a lot of it.
Neutral refers to the fact that neutrinos don't interact electromagnetically. They also don't interact via the strong force, and gravitational interaction of anything on this scale is negligible (although neutrinos are believed to have very small but nonzero masses). That leaves only weak nuclear interactions, which happened to occur twice in this detector.
byAnonymous Coward writes:
The bigger question is how did a chargeless neutrino particle get accelerated to that energy. Most current theories like 2nd order Fermi acceleration act on charged particles bouncing among moving plasma shock waves. Imagine a ping pong ball bouncing between between two walls in a cubic room that are approaching each other. There's no limit to how fast the ball can go because upon each bounce it gains a bit more speed from the wall and it doesn't matter that the ball speed is greatly higher than the wall
There may be more comments in this discussion. Without JavaScript enabled, you might want to turn on Classic Discussion System in your preferences instead.
Slashdot
●
●
Submit Story
Arithmetic is being able to count up to twenty without taking off your shoes.
-- Mickey Mouse
●FAQ
●Story Archive
●Hall of Fame
●Advertising
●Terms
●Privacy Statement
●About
●Feedback
●Mobile View
●Blog
Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information
Copyright © 2026 Slashdot Media. All Rights Reserved.
×
Close
Working...
Working...