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The combined 6.1σ excess of electron-like events observed by the LSND and MiniBooNE short-baseline neutrino experiments has long been interpreted as evidence for an eV-scale sterile neutrino. However, this hypothesis faces severe empirical contradictions: it is heavily excluded by muon-neutrino disappearance bounds (MINOS+, IceCube) and conflicts with cosmological constraints on relativistic species (ΔN_eff < 0.2 from Planck). Building upon our foundational series on the physical vacuum as an elastically pre-stressed continuum, we show that the Low-Energy Excess (LEE) is an environmental, target-mediated elastodynamic resonance rather than a vacuum oscillation. In our ontology, neutrinos are transverse torsional shear wavepackets propagating through a pre-stressed substrate. When an incoming ν_μ wavepacket traverses a hydrocarbon detector medium (CH_2), the localized strain field of target carbon nuclei (^12C) induces an acoustic boundary impedance gradient. In the specific energy window 200–450 MeV, the acoustic wavelength matches the spatial scale of the nuclear soliton boundary (λ_ν ~ 2 R_nuc), triggering an elastodynamic Faraday-type polarization rotation of the transverse shear plane: ν_μ -> ν_e. We derive the analytical resonance probability P_conv(E_ν), reproducing the MiniBooNE peak at E_res ≈ 250 MeV and the LSND appearance probability P_LSND ≈ 0.285%. Furthermore, because the larger nuclear radius of Argon-40 shifts the resonance down to E_res ≈ 150 MeV (below MicroBooNE's operational selection threshold), this framework naturally explains the MicroBooNE null result. The short-baseline anomalies are completely resolved under Occam's razor without sterile neutrinos, preserving N_eff ≡ 3.04 and electroweak gauge unitarity.
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Mirko Novák (2026) studied this question.
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