We go in parts. Dark energy forms two thirds of the universe. To that we add that nearly 100 billion neutrinos They pass through our body every second in a completely harmless way. The sum of these two events could, according to many scientists, explain one of the greatest mysteries of physics.
Neutrinos are between the strangest particles known, However, despite their invisibility, they contain a mystery that has revealed physicists: where does it come from His tiny and imperceptible mass?
For years it was speculated that neutrinos obtained their tiny masses by interacting with ultralight dark matter. In a recent study, published in Physical Review Letters, A team of scientists has tested this idea with real world data.
The authors, led by Andrew Cheek began their study with a simple theory. If neutrinos get their mass by interacting with a type of dark matter Composed of extremely light particles, less than 10 electronvolts (an electron weighs approximately 511,000 EV)? These light particles, probably bosons, could act as soft waves that oscillate in space, affecting the behavior of the passing neutrinos.
To check it, Cheek’s team built a theoretical model that explained how neutrinos would behave if they interact with said ultralight dark matter. According to its model, the field of dark matter would influence neutrinos mainly in two ways.
In the first place, temporary changes would be produced, where the field of dark matter, behaving like a slow wave, would cause small changes in the neutrino mass over time. This It depends on the frequency of the wave, which is linked to the mass of the dark matter particles.
In the second case, spatial effects, The location of neutrin detectors on Earth, the position of the sun and the movement of the planet in space They influence the interaction of the neutrino with the oscillating field of dark matter.
These factors, the study points out, would slightly modify the probabilities of oscillation of neutrinos from one type to another (for example, from an electronic neutrino to a mellic neutrino). Subsequently, They compared their predictions with real experiment data Kamland In Japana neutrin detector that has compiled years of precise measurements from natural and artificial sources.
Through simulations and comparing the theoretical signals with Kamland’s observations, the team sought any indication that coincided with the expected patterns of a mass origin influenced by dark matter. They also contrasted this approach using other neutrin experiments, including those who measure solar and long -based neutrinos and long -based lines (experiments that track neutrinos at various distances).
“We develop a frame in which the small mass of the neutrinos results from its interaction with the dark sector, and then we rigorously check if this connection can be detected using existing neutrin data, including oscillation experiments of short and long baseline neutrinos, and solar neutrin measurements – Luca Visinelli, co -author of the study – explained. Our results suggest that this origin in the dark sector for neutrinos masses is not supported by current data. ”
The problem is that this conclusion has further deepened the mystery of neutrinos. Now, it is much more likely that the masses of the neutrinos have an origin that we cannot explain, either because we have not discovered science behind or because we are facing a different physics.
The previous theory that linked the mass of neutrinos with dark matter gave scientists the hope that the discovery of ultralight dark matter would also solve the mystery of the mass of neutrinos. However, The conclusions rule out this idea and suggest that, if such interactions exist, they should have already left detectable traces in the oscillation data, and it is not so.
This leads us to the zero point. Scientists now do not know what really gives mass to neutrinos. However, although this may seem a dead point, it actually represents a great advance. When discarding a popular theory, the study helps scientists reduce the possibilities and to focus their attention on more promising roads, which perhaps involve new particles or forces beyond the standard model, but not related to dark matter.