Word: neutrinos
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...proposed candidate to provide the needed matter is the neutrino -- if it has mass and exists in the universe in such profusion that it could fill the bill. But 1987A may yet pour cold water on that idea: by coming in ahead of the light and in such short bursts, the neutrinos must have been traveling at or nearly at the speed of light. If they moved at the speed of light, according to Einstein, they have no mass. And if they traveled a bit more slowly and have mass, says Bahcall, that mass "is probably so small that...
...under Lake Erie, in the Kamioka lead and zinc mine in Japan, in the Mont Blanc Tunnel linking Italy and France, and in another tunnel under Mount Elbrus in the Soviet Union, scientists carefully examined data from computer printouts. They were hoping that some of the ethereal particles called neutrinos, predicted by theory to be produced during a supernova, had penetrated the earth, leaving their trail in huge liquid- filled neutrino detectors. Astrophysicist J. Craig Wheeler, of the University of Texas in Austin, summarized the activity while addressing a hastily convened meeting of astronomers at NASA's Goddard Space Flight...
...least one of the events predicted in theory apparently occurred. All four neutrino detectors recorded the arrival of bursts of the elusive little particles -- before the light appeared...
Still, the theoreticians could crow that in at least one way 1987A had performed according to the script. Minutes after hearing about the supernova but before they learned of any neutrino data, Astrophysicist Bahcall and two Israeli colleagues began working on a paper predicting the number of supernova neutrinos that should have been recorded by various detectors on earth; their paper was published in last week's Nature. If the neutrinos had been recorded -- and especially if they arrived before the supernova was seen -- it would be a dramatic confirmation of current supernova theory...
...evolution of galaxies through this type of neutrino clustering might explain one of cosmology's most perplexing paradoxes--the "missing mass" problem. This paradox arises because the amount of visible matter in the universe--both stars and luminous gas--is dwarfed by the total amount of matter estimated from studies of gravitational dynamics, velocity measurements and spectroscopic data...