Late last week, “Ray Davis died at 91 from complications due to Alzheimer’s”:http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2006\/06\/02\/nyregion\/02davis.html?ex=1150171200&en=40a0b519ebe85d99&ei=5040&partner=MOREOVERFEATURES. Dr. Davis is legendary in the field of physics for his painstaking devotion to the study of neutrino production in the sun. His work with physicist “John Bahcall”:http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/John_N._Bahcall demonstrated that the prediction of neutrino flux from the Standard Solar Model (SSM) overestimated the observed flux here on earth. This simple observation, driven by a desire to check the nuclear engine in our sun, led to one of the most mysterious and exciting discoveries of the last decade: “neutrinos have a very tiny, but non-zero, mass, which allows them to mix one into another”:http:\/\/www.interactions.org\/quantumuniverse\/qu\/questions\/q7.html.<\/p>\n
\nThe existence of neutrino mass, while it can be accomodated by the Standard Model of Particle Physics, is not itself well-connected to the origin of mass in the quarks and leptons. This presents a new landscape of puzzles, from the origin of mass in the universe to the asymmetric “relationship between matter and antimatter”:http:\/\/www.interactions.org\/quantumuniverse\/qu\/questions\/q9.html.<\/p>\n
\nSo many questions, so little time in a single human life. Thank you, Ray, for giving a new generation of physicists something to live for. May we do the same for our own scientific progeny.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Late last week, “Ray Davis died at 91 from complications due to Alzheimer’s”:http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2006\/06\/02\/nyregion\/02davis.html?ex=1150171200&en=40a0b519ebe85d99&ei=5040&partner=MOREOVERFEATURES. Dr. Davis is legendary in the field of physics for his painstaking devotion to the study of neutrino production in the sun. His work with physicist “John Bahcall”:http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/John_N._Bahcall demonstrated that the prediction of neutrino flux from the Standard Solar Model (SSM) overestimated […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-630","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-science","7":"czr-hentry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/steve.cooleysekula.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/630","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/steve.cooleysekula.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/steve.cooleysekula.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steve.cooleysekula.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steve.cooleysekula.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=630"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/steve.cooleysekula.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/630\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/steve.cooleysekula.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steve.cooleysekula.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steve.cooleysekula.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}