The Neutrino and the God of the Gaps
People criticize Intelligent Design as being a theory meant to fill in gaps in our knowledge. That, however, is often the role of theory (always?)— to make better sense of stuff that doesn’t fit our current thinking completely. The neutrino is a good example. It was posited to explain a gap in theory in 1931, but there was not experimental evidence “finding” it until about 30 years later. As “What’s a Neutrino?” tells us:
- 1931 - A hypothetical particle is predicted by the theorist Wolfgang Pauli. Pauli based his prediction on the fact that energy and momentum did not appear to be conserved in certain radioactive decays. Pauli suggested that this missing energy might be carried off, unseen, by a neutral particle which was escaping detection.
- 1934 - Enrico Fermi develops a comprehensive theory of radioactive decays, including Pauli’s hypothetical particle, which Fermi coins the neutrino (Italian: “little neutral one”). With inclusion of the neutrino, Fermi’s theory accurately explains many experimentally observed results.
- 1959 - Discovery of a particle fitting the expected characteristics of the neutrino is announced by Clyde Cowan and Fred Reines (a founding member of Super-Kamiokande; UCI professor emeritus and recipient of the 1995 Nobel Prize in physics for his contribution to the discovery). This neutrino is later determined to be the partner of the electron.