South Pole Telescope Data Places Better Limit on Neutrino Mass

An anonymous reader writes an excerpt from a press release by the University of Chicago: "Analysis of data from the 10-meter South Pole Telescope is providing new support for the most widely accepted explanation of dark energy — the source of the mysterious force that is responsible for the accelerating expansion of the universe." The research resulted in three papers involving new constraints on the mass of neutrinos, a measurement of the angular power spectrum of the CMB, and a catalog of newly discovered galaxy clusters. The data lends a bit more support to the cosmological constant theory of dark energy.

Re:

[game kid]

It's been developing for quite some time, apparently.

There's brazillions of them

[wcrowe]

WTF is a "neutronio"?

Re:There's brazillions of them

[Unknown Lamer]

I find spelling unpossile diffikult sometimes.

Re:

[Intrepid imaginaut]

All of my spelling and grammar are perfect in every way, just things are spelled differently in this dimension. We thought we had the rift closed before those creatures got through, but in fact we just popped out here, and let me tell you that was a surprise. Identical in every detail except spelling and grammar. God only knows whats going on back home, probably everyone is being eaten forever in the simulation spaces of the interlopers' minds, bit of a red face situation alright. Still, we'll get the exper

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[Anonymous Coward]

It's a press release from the University of Chicago. You should feel lucky it's not measured in rods or links.

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[buchner.johannes]

WTF is a "neutronio"?

It goes in and out of the planet.

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[tomhath]

They were discovered by Italian astronauts, who are also known as specimens

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[axlr8or]

it sounds like a funky dance move

Neutronio

[GameboyRMH]

It's-a me, Neutronio!

"neutronio"?

[macraig]

Is that a new Italian particle?

Jeez, Slashdot... please budget for editors who can proofread, okay?

Re:faggots bitching about the summary.

[Beelzebud]

The rest of them still haven't figured out how to frame this in to an anti-tax rant.

lower limit on neutrino mass?

[snoop.daub]

The experiment reports a new upper limit on the neutrino mass. I've seen upper limit estimates before this one, but I don't ever recall seeing a lower limit reported on a direct measurement of the neutrino mass. Nonzero mass is a requirement in standard theories of neutrino oscillation but that's a consequence of the theory, not a direct measurement. Is there a direct measurement of a lower limit out there that I'm not aware of?

Re:lower limit on neutrino mass?

[Anonymous Coward]

There are measurements that can determine the difference in the neutrino masses, or some similar function (e.g. difference in their masses squared). This gives that at least one of the neutrinos has a mass of 0.04 eV, and a second one has to have a mass of at least 0.009 eV. It doesn't really give a lower bound on the smallest one, although there are some other estimates of their masses from cosmological and astronomical data.

South Pole. It figures

[PPH]

There's nothing better to do there.

If the telescope was in Hawaii, they'd just put down any old number and hit the beach early. "Surf's up, dude!"