It May Be Possible That Certain SAPs May Be FTL!

Phys.org reports that in a new paper  accepted  by the journal Astroparticle Physics, written by Robert Ehrlich, a recently retired physicist from George Mason University, claims that the neutrino is very likely a tachyon or faster-than-light particle.

As of Now - Astronomers Have No Idea What Causes Cosmic Rays

Up until a short while ago, astronomers were confident they had a handle on where cosmic rays come from.

Cosmic Rays generate ultra-powerful particles. So powerful in fact that nothing on Earth or anywhere in the Universe can generate anything close let alone as powerful as cosmic ray particles.

 Scientists thought thought that cosmic rays were created in powerful gamma-ray bursts - but more resent experimental results have proved this idea to be false.

 Data from the IceCube Neutrino Observatory - located in Antarctica - has been searching for the illusive neutrino but has failed to observe a single occurrence - despite monitoring hundreds of gamma-ray bursts.

Now this presents itself as a fairly disturbing result. The neutrino has long been considered a part of the cosmic ray along with many other particles. So if you wanted to find where a cosmic ray originated you only had to look in the direction that the particle came from. We have detected cosmic rays for quite some time, but no neutrino - making finding the source of cosmic rays impossible!

 To say the least, scientists are "disappointed" in this result. However, now that they have discovered that cosmic rays are a non starter, another source needs to be found. The only other source that is energetic enough to generate neutrinos is the super massive black holes at the center of every galaxy including the Milky Way. Scientists do not know as of yet if these black-holes are capable or do emit neutrinos. The mystery really is heating up. Check out neutrinos at the Wiki site here

Neutron Stars can create impossible matter

Hey, want ta get ya mind twisted sideways? Lets talk about "super-fluids". One of the strangest things I have ever read about. A super-fluid really isn't....a fluid that is, not in the traditional sense. Super-fluids are theoretical matter that does things normal matter could not. A super-fluid happens when viscosity drops to zero and thermal conductivity becomes infinite. That means that it would be totally frictionless and could flow in ANY direction and while flowing it would have the exact same temperature throughout the "fluid". First weird thing? I could not be held in any kind of traditional container as we know them. Because it could flow up as easily as flowing across.

It goes without saying that the creations of these exotic materials takes an inordinate amount of pressure and energy. Lot of energy. One place that could support a form of super-fluid would be a neutron star (the remnants of a collapsed super giant star) and luckily there wold be indications this was taking place. Losing energy (brightness) and emitting neutrinos is a dead giveaway.

From the IO9 article:

• Cassiopeia A supernova fits this bill perfectly - since its discovery in 1999, the neutron star has lost 20% of its brightness and about 4% of its temperature. That's incredibly rapid temperature loss, and the best explanation for it is the creation of neutron super-fluids inside the star.

We are not likely to see super-fluids created anytime soon in the lab. The fantastic pressures and relatively low temperatures are still beyond our technical expertise.

Read the IO9 article for more info

Hello... This neutrino message is for you!

Wired Science blog makes a good point for how advanced alien cultures might communicate with us. Many of the choices we now are exploring and investigating for have some major draw backs. The worst of which is that they all are susceptible to attenuation due to noise of one type or another. Enter the mysterious neutrino.

From the Wired online blog:

First detected in 1953, neutrinos pass easily through most matter making it possible for your signal to pass through the Milky Way without being blocked by stars and interstellar dust. They are also not subject to the "noise" of optical and radio waves traveling alongside them through space. Aliens with access to abundant power (one neutrino production technique requires 3% the output of our sun, another is within range of earthly thermonuclear power plants) could send pulsed and directional neutrino messages to us. Luckily we are building elaborate neutrino detectors already (they must be very large and built deep underground or water to shielded from cosmic rays and other background radiation). The United States is building a neutrino detector called IceCube in Antarctica to detect naturally occurring neutrinos for scientific research. If they were to detect neutrinos at 6.3 petaelectron-volts (PeV) it could be a tell-tale sign of an artificially constructed signal, since there is no known natural process that would create neutrinos of that energy level. Researchers on earth however have identified two ways that such neutrinos could be created in the lab. Maybe we will soon be smart enough to be able to hear from more advanced civilizations.

Check out "Looking for ET's neutrino beam" at physicsworld online magazine for an in depth article on detecting and generating pulsed neutrinos