# Neutrinos emerge from Antarctica traveling the wrong direction and with wrong handedness

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neutrinos-emerge-from-antarctica-traveling-the-wrong-direction-and-with-wrong-handedness/854483>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [May 26, 2020, 9:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neutrinos-emerge-from-antarctica-traveling-the-wrong-direction-and-with-wrong-handedness/854483 "2020-05-26T09:28:27Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![Pasta](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ecccb3/32.png) [@Pasta](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pasta)\
**Post date:** [May 28, 2020, 11:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neutrinos-emerge-from-antarctica-traveling-the-wrong-direction-and-with-wrong-handedness/854483/21 "2020-05-28T23:18:48Z")

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> [@Chronos](#):
>
> One prediction of the Majorana model is that it should sometimes be possible to get a double beta decay with no neutrinos released. Some groups claim to have observed this.

This must have been some time ago. The Heidelberg-Moscow signal was twenty years ago, was never anywhere close to 7 sigma, was never believed by anyone that wasn’t an author on the result (for various solid reasons), and has been ruled out definitively by other measurements since then. So, the current situation is that there is no experimental basis to suggest a Majorana or Dirac nature of the neutrino, and I don’t think anyone in the field would say otherwise.

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**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\
**Post date:** [May 29, 2020, 1:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neutrinos-emerge-from-antarctica-traveling-the-wrong-direction-and-with-wrong-handedness/854483/22 "2020-05-29T01:19:32Z")

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> [@Pasta](#):
>
> It’s a real shame that folks interested in cutting edge science have to wade through garbage like this. The article is a confused mess with bizarre claims, misinterpretations, and misattributions.

It was a Daily Mail article. That’s about par for them.

> [@](#):
>
> Just… just pretend you didn’t read it.

Or better yet, don’t ever read anything from that source. Except for amusment purposes only. But if they claim the sun is going to rise in the east tomorrow, double check with at least three other sources to make sure.

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**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\
**Post date:** [May 29, 2020, 3:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neutrinos-emerge-from-antarctica-traveling-the-wrong-direction-and-with-wrong-handedness/854483/23 "2020-05-29T03:00:38Z")

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Yeah, it wasn’t quite 20 years ago, but it’d be close to that, by now. And the audience member raising the objection might well have been one of those authors-- He certainly seemed to have a personal stake in the matter. Anyway, my response now is the same as it was then: Here are both models, and I won’t say which one is correct.

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**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\
**Post date:** [May 29, 2020, 6:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neutrinos-emerge-from-antarctica-traveling-the-wrong-direction-and-with-wrong-handedness/854483/24 "2020-05-29T06:28:31Z")

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> [@dtilque](#):
>
> It was a Daily Mail article. That’s about par for them.
> 
> Or better yet, don’t ever read anything from that source. Except for amusment purposes only. But if they claim the sun is going to rise in the east tomorrow, double check with at least three other sources to make sure.

I think I stumbled on the whole story beginning from Google News. _Daily Mail_ is what was served up. Blame Google, not me!

Give me some credit, please. I then tracked down stories in [physicsworld.com](http://physicsworld.com) and elsewhere.

And it was _New Scientist_ — are they as bad as _Daily Mail_? — which wrote of “a topsy-turvy universe [where] time runs backwards.” Even stipulating that this experiment didn’t show that, I’ve wondered how particles arriving at Earth would “appear” to us, if they came from a hypothetical source with a reversed causality arrow.

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