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The Light & Dark Side Of Neutrinos

monado, Flickr Creative Commons

http://cptv.vo.llnwd.net/o2/ypmwebcontent/Chion/Colin%20McEnroe%20Show%20011012.mp3

If you're anything like me, your knowledge of neutrinos goes something like this:

  • They are extremely small. Smaller than other really small things.
     
  • John Updike wrote a poem about them.

There's something inherently funny about them. It might be their name. It might be something more than that. And then maybe you saw the coverage of the experiment in which neutrinos appeared to move faster than light.
This led to a whole bunch of borscht belt neutrino jokes:
The bartender says, "We don't get a lot of neutrinos in here." A neutrino walks in a bar.

Because if you go faster than light, time goes backward.
Maybe you had to be there. In the CERN particle accelerator.

Like all jokes, these concealed a certain amount anxiety. If the neutrinos really did this, a lot of what we "know" is wrong.

Leave your comments below, e-mail colin@wnpr.org or Tweet us@wnprcolin.

Colin McEnroe is a radio host, newspaper columnist, magazine writer, author, playwright, lecturer, moderator, college instructor and occasional singer. Colin can be reached at colin@ctpublic.org.

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