Speaker
Description
When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. – Sherlock Holmes
The earliest data collected by MACRO was analyzed for upward going muons, indicative of neutrino interactions in the ground a few meters below the detector. The sources of these neutrinos were expected to be from pion decay due to cosmic ray interactions, and, at much lower intensities, galactic (e.g., X-ray binaries) or extra-galactic (e.g., Active Galactic Nuclei) sources. When data from the first super-module’s inaugural run was analyzed, a lower number of upward going muons was observed than expected, albeit not up to the standard of statistical significance required, and was dismissed as a statistical anomaly. Other aspects of the analysis however, lent credence to the veracity of the finding. This analytical approach is described in detail.
