Neutrino: Placeholder ParticleFrom MicaNeutrino: Placeholder Particle a talk by Rob Knop of Quest University, Canada Sometimes critics of nonbaryonic dark matter will characterize it as a “placeholder particle”– the name we give to the fact that we can’t find particles doing the things that we see happening gravitationally. Of course, dark matter is not new in astronomy; Uranus, for instance, was originally detected indirectly. Nor are palceholder particles new in particle physics. The neutrino was originally proposed more than 20 years before it was first observed. In this talk, I’ll go over the history of our discovery of the neutrino, and how it was in fact astronomy that led to some relatively recent important discoveries about these elusive little particles. MediaSlides The book mentioned by Vic at the end is Introduction to Elementary Particles, Second, Revised Edition by David J. Griffiths. |