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Posted by pcdavid 9 hours ago

Physics Girl: Super-Kamiokande – Imaging the sun by detecting neutrinos [video](www.youtube.com)
376 points | 57 commentspage 2
legitster 5 hours ago|
It's really cool to see her back and making videos again.

After seeing her status updates 2 years ago I was honestly really concerned she would be gone for good. It sounds like she had a serious case of myalgic encephalomyelitis brought on by Covid.

Part of why we know so little about these types of conditions is they are incredibly unfair. Women are 4x as likely to have some sort of constant fatigue disorder as men, and you see this reflected in literature going back centuries when describing women who just flat out disappear from public life.

One of the things about being bedridden for a long period of time is that there is a high risk of becoming more or less permanently bedridden. Especially if you have a chronic fatigue syndrome, you become weaker and any activity can retrigger fatigue. So her pushing herself to make new content sustainably is important very encouraging.

flux3125 4 hours ago||
According to science video thumbnails on YT, nothing should be possible
olivia-banks 3 hours ago||
This is fantastic news! Long COVID is awful, so I'm glad to see that she's recovering, if only incrementally.
shadowgovt 4 hours ago||
One of my favorite bits of astrophysics trivia is that the neutrino detection experiments serve as an early-warning system for supernovae, to allow astronomers to prioritize telescope time and swing the scopes around to see the first visible-light and radio signals of the event.

This is because the electromagnetic energy of the supernova can take hours to force its way through all the star's mass to the surface when the core dies, but the gravitational crush turning protons and electrons into neutrons releases a massive burst of neutrinos in every direction. And the neutrinos are so weakly-interacting with the matter in the star that they get out first. Then, a million years later, arrive in our solar system at such a high fraction of lightspeed that they presage the coming electromagnetic shock-front because the constant difference in escape time between neturinos, which are particles of matter, getting out of the star without interacting with anything and the electromagnetic waves moving through the star's matter at a fraction of lightspeed created a gap that the light never caught up to.

The universe is a profoundly wild place.

alabhyajindal 6 hours ago||
BOOM! Let's go
gosub100 6 hours ago||
I can't remember where I heard of it, but decades ago there was another neutrino detection center, also in Japan I think, that had those vacuum tube detectors, but care wasn't taken in systems design. One of them broke and the implosion caused the neighbors to break. Leading to a catastrophic of almost all the sensors! I feel bad for them, I'm sure someone here knows the exact name and date. But man, what a tough lesson to learn.

Edit: on another note, way to go on your recovery Diana. We've been rooting for you.

0PingWithJesus 5 hours ago||
That was Super-K, the same detector she's talking about in the video. The incident occurred in 2001 and set back the start of the data taking for them quite a bit, they were able to begin data taking by re-distributing the unaffected photo-detectors to cover the gap where the imploded detectors were. Eventually (2005/2006) they replaced all the destroyed photo-detectors and took data from then on out with a full-suite of sensors. Following this incident all Japanese experiments with these types of photo-detectors take the risk of implosion seriously and have mitigation built in to the design. Super-K has been running continously since then with some interruptions for upgrades & maintenance, and is still taking data today (as far as I'm aware).

Construction is underway on the next version of the experiment "Hyper-Kamiokdande" which is similar in design but significantly bigger. If I recall correctly Hyper-K will be two 200 kilo-tonne detectors, compared to Super-K which is a measly 50 kilo-tonne detector.

tomasphan 5 hours ago||
It was the same detector that imploded. Mark 2 was then reinforced so it didn’t happen again.
human_hack3r 6 hours ago||
Happy to see her back to science!
nickandbro 6 hours ago||
Is this long Covid or depression or Major Depressive Disorder (MDD)? Because in her earlier videos she talks about becoming bed-bound again due to her emotional state after finding news her friend who had a similar condition died.
dirck-norman 6 hours ago||
As someone who suffers from a complex autoimmune disorder which has caused dysautonomia and suspected mitochondrial dysfunction, stress flares and exacerbates symptoms. This has a physiological basis in the complex way the HPA axis/cortisol affects us at the cellular level. My primary diagnosis is sarcoidosis with small fiber neuropathy, but they don’t fully understand all the mechanisms of auto-immune fatigue and dysregulation.
nickandbro 6 hours ago||
Sorry to hear. Thanks for explaining.
nablaxcroissant 6 hours ago|||
It was essentially long covid. me/cfs or chronic fatigue syndrome induced by covid infection
nickandbro 6 hours ago||
Wow, did not know that. Thanks
KaiserPro 6 hours ago|||
Dunno, personally I don't think its that much of my business. Sure I'm curious, but that doesn't mean I have a right, or that its a nice thing™ to publicly speculate
hinkley 1 hour ago||
She’s been pretty open about it. She even touched on it at the end of this video.
ChrisClark 6 hours ago||
I'm quite sure being that terribly sick could cause depression yeah, but that's not the reason
ck2 4 hours ago|
video about her long-covid battle and recovery here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqeIeIcDHD0

(caution for those currently sick as it's a rough watch at first)

hinkley 1 hour ago|
I know someone whose CFS is about 10% of hers and it was still a rough watch. She got hit really fucking hard.
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