Neutrino Oscillation Domain

Well down the NameBio daily domain name sales report for August 1, 2018, the name NeutrinoOscillation.org attracted my attention. The domain sold for $240 Aug. 1, 2018  at DropCatch. So what is a neutrino oscillation, why would anyone want the domain name, and what is the history of the associated website?

Scientific Background

So what is with neutrino oscillations?

What we now call the neutrino was proposed by the great physicist Enrico Pauli in 1930 on the basis of theoretical arguments to explain observed radioactive beta decay.  At that time he actually referred to it as the neutron, since it is electrically neutral.  But when that name was claimed for the much more massive particle we now call the neutron, the name neutrino (means little neutral one) came to be used for the particle, which was experimentally proven in 1956.  You can read more of the interesting history here.

The neutrino comes in multiple types, the electron, tau and muon neutrino. There are three corresponding antimatter particles, bringing the total number of types of neutrinos to six. Conservation laws prescribe the type of neutrino that a nuclear reaction will produce.

When scientists used the energy output of the sun to predict the rate of nuclear reactions taking place in the core, they could predict how many should be produced and it was trivial to calculate the neutrino flux here at Earth. The number is huge - during the past second something like 100 trillion neutrinos passed through your body.

While neutrinos are challenging to detect because they go right through most material without interaction, clever experimental physicists have figured out how to detect a neutrino, with several major facilities developed around the world, included SNO (Sudbury Neutrino Observatory) here in Canada. The early results indicated a substantially lower flux of the predicted type of neutrino than predicted.  This was called the solar neutrino problem or paradox (see account here).

The puzzle might imply that the nuclear reactions in the core of the sun were at a lower rate, the sun had essentially slowed down for some reason.  Since it takes a long period for energy produced in the core to reach the outer layers of the sun, this would be possible.  Another possibility is that we simply misunderstand the nuclear reactions in some fundamental way.

But the answer that turned out to be right is that the neutrino, or some of them, can change from one type to another, and this is what explained the differences in flux observed.  There is excellent coverage of the history and science of neutrino oscillations on Wikipedia.

The Nobel Prize in Physics in 2015  was awarded jointly to Takaaki Kajita of the
Super-Kamiokande Collaboration in Japan and Arthur B. McDonald of the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory Collaboration in Canada "for their key contributions to the experiments which demonstrated that neutrinos change identities."  You can read the Nobel Prize citation here,

History of the Site

The domain name has been registered since 2001, and has been web active since 2002 (note that its first registration whois data do not show this, but the web archive does, so I presume that it formally expired and its time was reset.)  The domain name has been used with a widely used and authoritative reference site with links to various articles, experiments, groups, etc. working in the neutrino oscillation field.  For example, below is a screen capture of how the site looked in 2004, obtained courtesy of the Internet Archive Wayback Machine.

It was maintained by a scientific researcher at Argonne National Lab. The site was widely used in the early years, even winning a hot pick award from Science Magazine back in 1998.  The activity on the site waned somewhat for a period, but by 2017 it was still essentially serving the same role, but with a refreshed visual look, as shown in the archive capture from 2017.

Closing Thoughts

Up to the time of posting I was not able to get confirmation from those buying or selling the domain name regarding future plans. Since it sold on DropCatch, it is likely that the domain name was simply allowed to lapse, hopefully deliberately. The domain name does not currently resolve (as of late August 2018 at least).  I think it has been held by someone other than the original owners for the past year. My guess is that the site had a sufficient number of backlinks that someone thought that at this price it would generate enough revenue through monetized parking to make the $240 purchase price sensible. I guess we will see if that turns out, although I personally would be doubtful with such a specialized term. Another possibility is that the new owner is associated with the scientific field, and has plans to re-establish a site in its historical tradition.

While the users of the site over many years will be disappointed by the end of an authoritative and useful reference site,  most reference sites eventually come to the end of their life, either because those who maintained them have moved on to other things, or because demand for the service has diminished. Perhaps, now that the solar neutrino mystery has been largely solved, and a Nobel Prize  awarded for the work, it was felt that this was a good time to move on to other efforts. Nevertheless, the scientific community should express thanks to those who maintained the site over so many years.

Like this post?  You might also be interested in our examination of the sale of the BullAtomSci.org domain name.

Links:

• NameBio report of NeutrinoOscillations.org sale
• Neutrino Proposal and Discovery
• Neutrino Types and Research
• Neutrino Oscillations on Wikipedia
• How many neutrinos pass through your body?
• Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO)
• Nobel Prize  Physics 2015 citation
• Wayback Machine Internet Archive
• Argonne National Lab
• Sale of BullAtomSci.org domain name
• NameBio Daily Reports
• Our site NamesThat.win - thanks for visiting
• Permanent link to this blog post

Original post Aug 26, 2018.


Fine Print

This post is offered for informational and educational purposes only, and should not be considered domain name investment advice. While an attempt has been made to be accurate, there is no implied or explicit warranty, and you are responsible for verifying any information of importance to you.

I try to be fair, balanced and objective in my analysis.  If you feel this post does not meet that standard, please express your concerns to me.  As disclosure, I do have a domain portfolio that is predominantly ngTLD domain names, although I do also own a number of .com, .ca, .co and a few other country code extension domains..

In a few cases there may be affiliate links will on this blog. This means I receive a small amount if users visit or make purchases via the link. You do not pay any additional charge due to using an affiliate link, and in some cases below the normal price. I receive no identifying information about who clicks, or does not click, any link. I never accept compensation to provide favourable review of any particular service or product.

The text of this posting is ©R.L. Hawkes, all rights reserved. However, you may, without permission, use reasonable length portions of the post as long as a link to this post is also provided. If you wish to use the complete contents of a post, please request permission. I am normally open to reprinting, but will consider each request individually. 

The images used are either those associated with a product or service, my own images, or Pixabay images believed to be available for use without attribution. If you see any image that you believe is problematic, please let us know and we will immediately correct the situation.

My Most Visited Domain on Undeveloped - Photon.gdn

I was recently offline for a couple of weeks, and when I returned I noticed that I had a new "most visited" domain name on my Undeveloped portfolio (my overall portfolio contains about 200 domain names).  One nice feature of Undeveloped is that it tracks how many visits each domain name gets. If you have the DNS pointed to Undeveloped, then a user typing in the exact full domain name will be counted as a visit, as will someone searching within Undeveloped and clicking on that domain name from the list of domains presented.  Undeveloped do not count visits to your own domains while you are editing your portfolio. You can have a display of visits displayed for potential purchasers if you wish.

Anyway, back to the story.  For the first time since I have been using Undeveloped, a .gdn (global domain name) had rocketed to first place in the most visited category, and by a dominant lead.  The name? photon.gdn  Now I am not sure exactly when I set my DNS to point to Undeveloped for this domain, but as the graph here shows that the uptick in visits over the past month is impressive. Keep in mind that this is not a list of searches on the word photon (which would be in the tens of millions per month), but actually typing in exactly photon.gdn.

Given that the global domain name extension is not that well known, this is especially surprising.  This is the first time that a .gdn has been in the top 5 most visited list on my Undeveloped portfolio. As a sidelight, another .gdn domain name also appeared on my most visited list, BCTech.gdn, but I had dome some promotion of this name in conjunction with recent British Columbia technology announcements and events, so that is perhaps not so surprising.  Up to now, I had done zero promotion of photon.gdn, so it rose to first place all by itself.

When I purchased the domain name photon.gdn some months ago, as a physicist I did recognize that it is a pretty special word. Much of my research career was based on making sense of astronomical objects from the photons they emitted or reflected. The photon is the quanta of light, that is the smallest energy packets that light comes in.  I am using the word light loosely here, and actually the word photon applies to any kind of electromagnetic radiation, from microwave to infrared to visible to X-ray to gamma ray. A photon of ultraviolet radiation has more energy than a photon of visible light, and that is why exposure to ultraviolet radiation carries more biological risk.

Photon is therefore one of the most important words in science.  But it also is of huge importance in industry, especially in communications. The industry of photonics essentially deals with doing with light what used to be accomplished using electronics (photons replacing electrons).  A single fibre-optic cable can simultaneously carry a huge number of voice transmissions (or other types of data).  The National Centre for Photonics and Optics Education have a nice introduction to photonics here. From communications to medicine, signal processing to imaging, photonics is changing our world.

Even among new extension domain investors, I admit there is not a lot of familiarity or enthusiasm for gdn, and I think that is unfortunate.  I am somewhat contrarian in my view of the extension, and do see significant value and potential.  The idea of gdn was a global domain name - i.e. rather than using a .uk or a .de or a .ca,  a company that operated in multiple countries, but did not want to use multiple country code extensions or a new or legacy other top level domain, might choose gdn. I say company, but the idea for gdn has always been inclusive of any business, individual, site, or organization

I like the premise for the extension .gdn.  Even though there are a significant number of registered domains in the extension (about 100,000 according the NameStat data), I find that occasionally great single generic words can still be found to register (in most cases these have been held previously but allowed to drop by a domain investor).  As with many of the new extensions, discount pricing has hurt the extension, and resulted in the usual dip after the one year period following cheap registrations ended. Pricing seems to have stabilized in the last year (the extension has been generally available for a bit under three years).  If you look at NameStat data there is one Alexa top 1M website using the extension for every 1400 registrations, which is actually pretty positive. As comparators, the .app extension is about one for every 4000 registrations, and the leading new extension .top has one Alexa top 1M for every 2600 currently (you can find this information for yourself for any global extension using Namestat).

The extension has, not surprisingly, most registrations in the US, although the geographic spread is pretty healthy (see graph based on NameStat data). There are registrations from 111 different countries. I think that for a name that claims to be global it is important to have significant registrations in both the US and China, as well as developed and developing countries in various parts of the world. The extension passes this test.

One aspect I look at when considering the viability of a domain extension is which registrars handle it, and how expensive and stable renewal rates are.  In the case of .gdn, major registrars including Alpnames, Dynadot, Epik, Gandi, Namecheap and OVH all offer renewals at about $12 or less. You can find the best deals on any domain extension (for registration, transfer or renewal) at https://tld-list.com/.

I decided to try to figure out why the specific domain name photon.gdn had suddenly rocketed to first place among my Undeveloped portfolio domains.  As a starting point I did a Google search on gdn photon.  The results are shown in the screen capture.  I was somewhat surprised (and pleased) to see that the leading search result pointed to the technology section of the domain name catalog at my website.   Also the third entry is the Undeveloped lander for the domain name, which may help explain the number of people landing there.

I think if you look down through the other links and image search, though, another clue is offered regarding the popularity of photon.gdn.  I won't go into the technical details, but GdN is a semiconductor material used in the photonics industry. In this case by serendipity the extension abbreviation is the same as the scientific abbreviation for a related term.  When this happens, there are definitely advantages in search engine optimization, yes for the lander for the domain but more importantly to a future holder of the domain name.

As a domain name investor, I had to decide how to respond to the new popularity of one of my domain names.  While the name had received lots of visits in the month, there were no offers made to purchase the domain name.  Up until a few days ago I had no price set for this particular domain name, and it was simply listed with make an offer on Undeveloped (or through my Efty Marketplace).  I had three options: leave it that way and wait for an offer, set a fairly high but it now (BIN) price and hope that the popularity would lead to a major sale, or set a modest BIN and hope to quickly sell the domain name.  I do realize there are sound arguments for all three choices, but my primary interest is to see domain names, especially scientific and technical ones, get into use on websites, so I decided to set a modest BIN.  Simply enter the domain name into any browser to see that price (assuming that it has not yet sold at the time you read this), or easier yet use this link. The good folks at Undeveloped will efficiently and securely handle your payment and promptly transfer ownership of the domain name to you.

It will be interesting to see if having a BIN price will result in a sale or offer.  The research done by Undeveloped suggests that having a BIN price, having the lander at Undeveloped, and showing your full profile as a seller all help in getting sales.

PS In case you are wondering, some of the other domain names which have been in the top 5 most visited of my Undeveloped portfolio over the past few months are listed here.  These are not necessarily my most interesting or valuable domain names, and some have DNS pointing to Undeveloped and others do not, so the comparison is skewed by that.  Click (or enter in browser) any domain name to go to the lander for it.

• BCTech.gdn
• bitcoiner.top
• debut.world
• NanoAZ.com
• MedicalCRISPR.com
• risky.space
• tweets.today

What is a domain name 'win'?

Earlier this year we launched our website NamesThat.Win. We wanted to take the opportunity to discuss what the word 'win' means to us in the context of a domain name and website.

We suggest the following checklist when evaluating your website and its domain name.

• The website should reflect positively on your organization. While content is clearly critical, as well as attention to detail, the impression starts with the name you adopt. Yes, the name can be catchy and even cute, but always in a tasteful way.
• Honesty is critical. The name and website should reflect what you are about in a clear way. Never use a name to try to pretend your organization and goals are something that they are not. Many will disagree, but I say don't use an .org top level domain (TLD) if you are not an organization, and don't use .com if you are not a business. I wish there were controls so that someone could not use .science if they have nothing to do with science!
• The website should be informative.  After I visit your website I should feel that my time was well spent in terms of efficient access to valid information. Even if your primary goal is to sell a product or service, your website should provide information to help a potential purchaser make an informed decision, as well as support documentation. 
• Is the website sustainable? Is it designed so that you can reasonably do what is required to keep it current? Is the total cost sustainable in terms of the value that the website brings to your organization? If you go for a premium domain or an expensive .com, can that cost be justified?  Too many people rush into owning too much home for their means, and I find some companies do the same with respect to a domain name and website. Of course many do the opposite, and a year or two later purchase a higher quality domain name and need to rebrand to the new name.
• The name should be location appropriate.  If you plan to only operate in a single country, with essentially no customers beyond the borders, it does make sense to use a country specific domain name. Research shows that these are more respected and trusted. However, if your vision extends beyond your home country, seriously consider starting with a global top level domain (gTLD), or possibly multiple domain extensions with a common first name. It will be interesting to see how the .gdn (which stands for global domain name) takes off as a general extension for those from all regions.
• Almost all websites should feel current. While achieving this will depend partly on the  design, having current content is critical. Also, start with a domain name that suggests a modern site. Some domain names just feel ordinary and old. I realize adoption has been slow, but I think that the new global top level domain extensions (ngTLD) offer real opportunities. Make social media interact smoothly with your website. For example, it is easy to have your Twitter feed display on your website.
• How memorable is you name, and in what other ways will you help people find you? A name that people can easily remember, and that is also descriptive, will go a long way in people remembering how to find you.  I think the ideal domain name is common, but not too common to lend an air of distinctiveness. If you do decide to go with a made up brandable name, you will need to figure in the costs of promoting that name.
• Think about the goals for your website. Is it primarily to sell, interact with clients, provide support, contribute to public understanding, earn advertising revenue, or make your organization better known. Make sure your website structure, and the domain name, are both congruent with these goals. If you have two or more rather different goals, you might want to think about multiple domain names to keep the separation clear.

The last point is perhaps the most important. Before you consider available domain names and how much you are willing to pay, or how you will design and host your website, start with the goals you have for your online presence.  Make a written list, and get the opinion of others, revising as appropriate. 

So why did we select  our domain name NamesThat.win? We believe in the long term value of the ngTLDs, so wanted to model one ourselves. Also, we see value in using a domain name expression as our name, and wanted to model that.  As a small operation, but with potential customers from around the world, we wanted a global TLD. Considering sustainability, the domain name was reasonable to purchase and to renew (we have it registered for 10 years so our domain costs are completely known for a long time). We feel that your consideration of names ideally starts before you have registered a company name or domain name, so we wanted the word 'name' not 'domain' in our website. 

We realize that at first glance .win is an unusual choice.  The intention of those who set up the .win registry was that it would mainly support activities such as online gaming. However, as explained above, win is used in everyday language in a much more general sense.  A win is something that meets or exceeds your stated goals, and it is in that sense that we selected it for our website. 

Ultimately our goal is to help you clarify your goals, to set criteria for evaluating success, and to help you 'win' by achieving success in those goals. We hope that you will continue to visit this blog, access our website regularly, and follow us on Twitter @AGreatDomain.

But enough about us.  As the first step to your online 'win', elaborate on your online goals.  Only with goals clearly in mind will you be able to plan a successful route forward, and evaluate how successful you have been with your online presence.