Tracking Neutrinos

Section of neutrino observatory under Mount Kamioka.

Photo taken from Greg L.'s Blog: *Quantum Spirit*

This poem was found in the notebook of a physicist found dead of unknown causes.

Tracking Neutrinos

You weigh tiny bits
of nothing and oscillate
among your own selves
as if you might change
the very nature of time
and further ignore
the last vestiges
of relationship with space
having long surpassed
the wan likes of me
on your straight way, you beyond
us all forever.

March 9, 2012 5:16 PM

An electron weighs almost nothing. Neutrinos weigh a million times less but just enough to change identities in what are called neutrino oscillations. Electrons can actually push things around as we well know, having harvested their power. They push things around only because there are so many of them. Or as someone pointed out, there may be only one electron manifesting simultaneously so many half precise times and half determined places. At the level of a solitary electron, you can only know so much with precision. If you wish to know all, then you have to accept considerable uncertainty in what you know. Neutrinos are so small and weigh so little that they really do ignore us all. Such aloofness may be tough to take even if you are professional.