What is the mass of a neutrino?

Neutrinos are among the most abundant particles in the Universe. They are also the lightest of all the known subatomic particles that have mass — weighing around 500,000 times less than an electron.

Do neutrinos interact with mass?

Trillions of neutrinos pass harmlessly through your body each second, and in fact, rarely interact with any matter at all. Neutrinos are a type of fundamental particle known as a fermion. All other fermions, such as leptons and quarks, gain their mass through their interactions with the Higgs boson.

Is neutrino negative mass?

Neutrinos are negative relativistic mass symmetric particles to their corresponding ordinary electron, muon, and tau particles. Their masses are predicted by dividing the masses of the electron, muon, and tau particles by the neutrino’s Lorentz factors, which are always greater than >10^+6.

How big is the difference between the neutrinos?

Observations of the number of these muon neutrinos interacting in detectors around the world have shown that the differences in the squares of the masses between the third mass state and the other two mass states is much larger than the difference between the first and second mass states. In this case, the difference is about one part in 400.

How does the mass of a neutrino affect its speed?

Mass neutrinos and flavor neutrinos coexist in an interesting way. When a neutrino—let’s say an electron neutrino—is born, it is a quantum mechanical combination (or superposition) of all three mass states. Each particle is also a wave, and each has a slightly different mass, meaning each travels at a slightly different speed.

Is the mass of a neutrino the same as the flavor?

One might think that each of the three masses has a different flavor, but the truth makes matters more confusing: the mass state of a neutrino does not precisely match up with the flavor state of a neutrino.

Which is the lightest electron or muon neutrino?

The electron is much lighter than the muon and tau particles, so it seems normal that the mass neutrino that usually shows up as an electron neutrino would be lighter than the other mass neutrinos. Put another way, the electron neutrino is mostly made up of the neutrino mass state that is the lightest of the mass states.