Are sterile neutrinos realized in nature?
Standard
12
Ṁ172
2041
40%
chance

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sterile_neutrino

This market will resolve if any of the following are true:

- If the current time is past 2040-12-31 11:59:59

- Someone points me to evidence of a consensus in the scientific community

It will resolve based on the following decision tree:

- Resolves to consensus of the scientific community, otherwise

- Resolves to MKT

Note that the bot operator reserves the right to resolve contrary to the purely automated rules to preserve the spirit of the market. All resolutions are first verified by the human operator.

The operator also reserves the right to trade on this market unless otherwise specified. Even if otherwise specified, the operator reserves the right to buy shares for subsidy or to trade for the purposes of cashing out liquidity.

Nov 16, 4:36pm: Are sterile neutrinos real? → Are sterile neutrinos realized in nature?

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If they can't interact by any non-gravitational force, how do they get created in the first place? Wouldn't that break some thing about reversibility?

Oh, this is much better. I'm assuming we resolve NO (or at least MKT) if there's no discovery by resolution?

@ScottLawrence Updated description

predicts NO

Okay, thanks.

I predict that at resolution the scientific consensus will at most be "could exist, could not, no evidence".

Any particular resolution criteria?

By the way, note that markets with extremely long resolution times, and the potential for early resolution in only one direction (which is true of this market), have biased probabilities. Usually this can just be ignored, but for an 80-year lead time, I think it's a substantial issue. It might be worth precommitting to not resolving at all until close time; or else, bringing the close time nearer to the current date. (Or both.)

@ScottLawrence Honestly, I might just scrap this market. Between this and the niche topic, I think it wasn't my best idea

@LivInTheLookingGlass Noooooo. I love the topic! This sort of thing is exactly what I want.

I need to try and recruit my colleagues onto this site. We could have a lively time...

One good thing to clarify---do you require detection, or is it sufficient if the strong consensus among physicists is that sterile neutrinos must exist (for mathematical consistency reasons, for instance), but at some energy too high to access?

@ScottLawrence If Wikipedia uses language similar to "likely exists" for a long period without controversy, I would consider that good enough. If you have a better way to judge consensus for the physics community?

Either way, I don't want to taint the market by changing resolution criteria, so all discussions here would be for a new market. I would think a date like 2040 would be reasonable. The criteria would go in both directions, so if Wikipedia said "likely does not exist", that would resolve NO before close

Mind, I am a little bit relying on others here. I would probably find out about it soonest through PBS Space Time

Actually, it might be neat if I added a few lines to my market manager script that go along the lines of "hey, this market is really close to YES or NO, does that need to get checked on?".

That might be hard for multi-outcome markets, but maybe I could define something like "if you have a low enough distance from what you'd currently resolve to"? Or just not support it for that, I guess

predicts NO

@LivInTheLookingGlass A good way to judge the consensus (albeit delayed by a few years) is to look at review articles. The particle data book (see here: https://pdg.lbl.gov/) is a particularly good and reliable source. If a particle is listed there without caveats, then you should be happy to resolve YES. It also contains current bounds on particle searches. Very useful little guy. And you can get a copy for free, since demand is so low!

predicts NO

@LivInTheLookingGlass In re: "I don't want to taint the market by changing resolution criteria".

Maybe I'm a bit too cavalier about this, but I wouldn't worry, as long as you're staying true to the spirit of the market. Particularly when there aren't many betters, and when it should be crystal clear to everyone that the precise terms of the market haven't yet been determined---both are true of all of our physics markets. The downside is that, yeah, the first few betters may lose a bit. The upside is that the market creator has an opportunity to spend a few days collecting input and refining the market, rather than needing to get it all right in one go.

Creating good markets is hard.