More on James, Halzen, and the universe

I mentioned Tuesday of this week that Francis Halzen won the Nobel Prize this year for work capturing neutrinos at the South Pole.

Why does that matter? As background, consider that neutrinos (unlike, say, electrons) have no electric charge and virtually no mass. They are everywhere, passing quickly through us and anything else with little interaction. This justifies the nickname "ghost particles".

They exist because supermassive black holes (and certain other bodies) create them and fling them out.

Again: what do we learn from catching such a ghost in polar ice?

We learn in what direction and how quickly it is moving when it hits the ice. Furthermore, whatever line it has been moving on when it did so, we know that it has been on precisely that line, without any swerving or bouncing about, for a looooooong time.

Detect one, as Astronomy mag says in its treatment of the Nobel, and it points right back to its origin. Scientists will often be able to fix which black hole threw it out. This makes it seem to be a bearer of a cosmic message.

For specialized interpreters of the messaging, this datum can contribute to our understanding of the aforesaid supermassive black holes, supernova explosions, and black hole mergers.

If there is something in the patterning that suggests humanly graspable meaning in all the "cosmic weather" that Chauncey Wright referenced, the South Pole neutrino observatory may be one big step toward it.

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