Why do neutrinos change flavors as they travel?
Neutrino oscillation
Why do neutrinos change flavors as they travel?
Imagine you're at a party, and you have a secret message written in invisible ink that changes color when exposed to sunlight. You're curious why it changes color after a while.
Neutrinos are like the invisible ink message, and as they travel through space, they switch between different 'colors' or flavors. This happens because neutrinos have a tiny amount of mass, allowing them to change flavors.
Example
A neutrino produced as an electron flavor (like a red invisible ink message) might later be detected as a muon flavor (like a blue invisible ink message) after traveling through space.
Remember this
Neutrino oscillation proves neutrinos have mass because they can change flavors, which isn't possible if they were massless.
Text adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
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