🚀 go-pugleaf

sichase@csa1.lbl.gov (SCOTT I CHASE) says:

> vijay@wiliki.eng.hawaii.edu (Vijay Fafat) writes...

>> I had read long back in one of the Asimovs that only a left handed neutrino
>> exists in Nature. Recently, I also read that if the neutrino has a non-zero
>> mass, then a right-handed neutrino HAS to exist and would be very heavy. Now
>> I have one question : Suppose the neutrino HAS a non-zero mass and Suppose I
>> see a left-handed neutrino going.I decide to overtake it (this is possible
>> in principle since the neutrino would be moving slower than light if it has
>> a non-zero mass). As I over   (... some text was garbled here...)>
>> handed neutrino (Visualize its "screwing" motion w.r.t. the spin direction)
>> However, I would measure its rest mass to be the same as before i.e. that of
>> a left handed neutrino. So do I get a LIGHT right-handed neutrino? Where am
>> I going wrong?

> Yes, you get a light right-handed neutrino.  As you pointed out, chirality is
> not Lorentz invariant for massive particles.  I don't know about this "heavy
> right-handed neutrino" business.  Perhaps someone else knows what is refered
> to here.

Perhaps he is thinking of the proposed "push-pull" mechanism, in which the
neutrinos we know and love get a small mass by a dynamical method which
requires the existence of a heavy partner.  This is a relatively new idea,
though (5 years or so), so it wouldn't have been in an old Asimov book.