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KATRIN helped weigh the neutrinos

25.09.2019

Neutrinos can be attributed to the strangest subatomic particles. Due to the very small mass and the absence of an electric charge, neutrinos practically do not interact with ordinary matter, they can absolutely freely penetrate accumulations of matter, such as planets and even stars. Scientists have been trying to figure out the value of the neutrino mass for several decades using various highly sensitive sensors, and recently the sensor of the Karlsruhe Tritium Neutrino (KATRIN) experiment in Germany, which has been under development for almost two decades, has produced the first results.

Having knowledge of the neutrino mass is important for understanding why neutrinos interact with ordinary matter only through the forces of weak nuclear interactions. In addition, from the point of view of quantum mechanics, each type of neutrino consists of a combination of three probabilistic "mass states". However, due to the basic strangeness of quantum mechanics, it is possible to measure only the "mass state" or establish the type of neutrino, it is fundamentally impossible to measure these two quantities at once.

Precise measurements of the neutrino mass have required scientists to be creative. The core of the KATRIN experiment is a 10-meter container containing 25 grams of the radioactive isotope of hydrogen, tritium. This hydrogen is cooled to an ultra-low temperature and the so-called beta decay constantly occurs in its environment, as a result of which one of the neutrons turns into a proton, generating an additional electron and an electron antineutrino, the mass of which corresponds to the mass of an ordinary electron neutrino.

The products of beta decay fall into the active region of a sensor-spectrometer, the size of a residential building, which allows you to measure the energy of electrons. The essence of the experiment is that the electron and neutrino always receive some of the energy released during the decay reaction. This number may fluctuate from case to case, but the proportion of energy distribution between the electron and the neutrino always remains the same. And as a result of the operation of the sensor, a graph is obtained, the shape of which allows you to calculate the maximum energy for each "mass state" of the neutrino.

After 28 days of work and data collection, the scientists of the KATRIN experiment obtained the minimum value of the average sum of the three neutrino mass states at a level of less than 0.1 eV (electron volt), the maximum value of this parameter was 1.1 eV. For comparison, the mass-energy of an electron is about 500 thousand eV, and that of a proton is almost one billion.

The obtained value of the maximum neutrino mass is almost two times less than the values given by other experiments, for example, quite recently, scientists, using cosmic neutrino particles, derived a mass value of 2.6 eV. However, here it should be taken into account that the data of the KATRIN experiment were collected within only one month, and scientists still have five years ahead of them, during which they will collect and analyze new data.

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TCL WQ Gaming 25.11.2019

TCL has developed an advanced WQ Gaming Tablet Display designed for use in gaming-grade tablet computers.

The presented display has a size of 10,8 inches diagonally and has a resolution of 2560 x 1600 pixels. Pixel density reaches 280 PPI - dots per inch.

The main feature of the panel is a high refresh rate of 240 Hz. In addition, the screen has a fast response time of 2ms (GTG).

Another feature of the WQ Gaming Tablet Display is the presence of a small hole designed for the front camera. Its diameter is only 3,5 mm.

The panel has a thickness of 1,5 mm. Claimed brightness is 500 cd/m2. The published images also speak of an almost complete lack of frames.

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