[–] The_Adventurist 0 points 4 points 4 points (+4|-0) ago
L Ron Hubbard was right! Thetans confirmed!
[–] Murzac 0 points 5 points 5 points (+5|-0) ago
I'm very curious about how they're planning to tell these "geoneutrinos" apart from the "regular" neutrinos. The sun afterall emits an absolutely gigantic amount of them at all times so I'd expect the ones coming from the nuclear reactions in the earth's core to be completely drowned out unless there were some telltale sign that shows that they came from the earth and not the sun.
[–] Sciencegirl ago
I thought that very few coming from space neutrinos actually made it down to where the lab thing is and that's how they filter what they don't want....I could be completely wrong just what I thought.
Oh a lot of them definitely get down there. I mean there's millions passing through your body every second and they don't really give the slightest of a damn about matter either. As the article also mentions, a neutrino would have to travel lightyears through led before it came to a stop because of how little it interacts with matter.
[–] Devilbiter 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago
If we can't determine momentum and can only discern energy, we can compare the measurements of having the facility face the sun (noon) and face opposite of the sun (midnightish). Using the difference in the measurements, knowing the decay rate through the earth of the neutrinos and the effective width of the earth, we should know what fraction come from the sun. That is, if the earth is any good at shielding neutrinos.
a light-year's worth of lead, equal to about 5.8 trillion miles (9.5 trillion kilometers) would only stop about half of the neutrinos flying through it.
The earth probably can't stop too many neutrinos. Then again, I thought we had a good idea of how many neutrinos are coming from the sun since we know what nuclear reactions are occurring and the mass of the sun. If you assume no (or almost no) neutrinos are absorbed by the earth from the sun, then we can simply subtract the sun neutrinos from the number measured underground. That sounds more reasonable.
Damn. That is one penetrative particle. Does it just not interact with matter?
[–] Fembot 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago
I didn't know that neutrinos were generated by the earth. I thought they were of unknown origin.