Keeble Observatory June 2011

Keeble Observatory

March 2012 Sky from the Keeble Observatory

Last month we were describing the Standard Model, which is the current framework for understanding the “zoo” of subatomic particles. Recall that we identified two kinds of quark and the electron as constituents of the material world around us, and then two more families of quarks and associated leptons to explain the rest. (Lepton is a label applied to light particles which are not subject to strong nuclear forces.) The table below identifies the components of this model.

The electron is the most familiar of the leptons. (The word electron comes from the Greek word for amber, and is the same root as electricity. Supposedly, static electricity was first noticed by Thales of Miletus, who reported that when amber was rubbed with wool it would attract lint.) Their motion through wires subject to an electric potential difference (i.e. a “voltage”) is the current which causes the lights to come on. They are stable, fundamental particles which do not decay into anything. Electrons also have a mirror “antiparticle” called the positron, which has the same mass but opposite electric charge. If an electron meets a positron they annihilate and vanish in a flash of gamma radiation. As we noted last time, the muon was discovered in the 1940s, but nobody knew what to make of it. We now see it as a heavier version of the electron – about 200 times more massive – but it’s unstable. The muon decays into an electron and two neutrinos. OK, you ask – what’s a neutrino, and where does it fit into the Standard Model?

Recall last month’s observation that we needed a third participant to explain beta decay, in which the neutron decays into an electron and a proton and something else. That something else is the neutrino, originally “invented” as a neutral particle which couldn’t be detected, but whose participation in beta decay would preserve energy and momentum conservation. Neutrinos are extremely light particles which travel at virtually the speed of light. They interact only weakly with matter, and would typically travel thousands of light years before interacting with anything. It turns out that each lepton has an associated neutrino, so there are electron neutrinos, muon neutrinos, and tau neutrinos. Each also has an antineutrino! When the muon decays it produces an electron and an electron antineutrino, thus preserving the “count” of particles in the first family. Since the muon has disappeared, the count of second family particles is preserved by emitting a muon neutrino. The tau is even more massive. 34% of the time it decays into either a muon or an electron with its appropriate antineutrino, plus a tau neutrino. It can also decay into a pion plus a tau neutrino.

You may have seen in the news a report that researchers may have found neutrinos travelling faster than light. Although those results are now being questioned (apparently two cables were not properly connected!), the fact that it made the news should tell you that neutrinos are indeed part of “standard” physics. Next time we’ll try to pull this back to astronomy.

Lunar phases for March: Full Moon on the 8^th, at 4:39 am; Last Quarter on the 14^th, at 9:25 pm (also Albert Einstein’s birthday!); New Moon on the 222^nd at 10:37 am; and First Quarter on the 30^th at 3:41 pm.

I hope you’ve been enjoying the evening show, assuming you like to look for bright planets. Four of the brightest have been gracing our evening skies. To the west, you can’t have missed Jupiter and Venus. You may have missed Mercury low to the horizon. To the east, that red “star” is Mars. And we’ve seen the Moon wander from west to east.

Saturn has been rising after 10:00 pm, and is still above the western horizon at sunrise.

By month’s end you’ll still see Venus and Jupiter as the first to emerge from evening twilight. Venus is the brighter of the two, and it will be above Jupiter after they come within 4 degrees on the 12^th. Mars is rising earlier, so you’ll see it higher to the east and crossing to the south as the evening advances.

An overhead look at mid-March reveals a mostly empty sky at zenith. The likely unfamiliar constellations of Lynx and Leo Minor are in that direction, but there are no bright stars to grab your attention. Brighter and more familiar asterisms lie tens of degrees below zenith. Gemini are high (about 70 degrees) to the southwest, marked by the “twins” Castor and Pollux. Below Gemini we bid farewell to Orion and all the familiar bright stars in that constellation and those around it. To the south-southeast we find the sickle shape of Leo, with bright blue Regulus joined by the red planet Mars. Ursa Major (including the Big Dipper asterism) is high to the northeast, and Capella marks the constellation Auriga to the northwest.

Copyright 2012
George Spagna