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Neutrino tomography of Earth

nature.com

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Re: Neutrino tomography of Earth

#21

Post by pvg »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #20
lootsauce wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could we not just land a detector on the far side of the moon. Thats pretty large no?

You need to have the reaction mass to make use of. Most neutrino detectors use special chemicals in custom tanks, IceCube uses antarctic ice. You would need not just mass but ice or water for a neutrino detector, ideally highly compressed optically clear ice. The only possible candidate in the Solar System that fits that bill at present is Europa. Though it's possible that similar conditions might also exist on Mars…

Not all detectors were optical so if you found a moon made of, say, dry cleaning fluid, you'd still be good.

Re: Neutrino tomography of Earth

#22

Post by ArtWomb »

jboggan wrote: post #2

This is really brilliant, literally jaw-dropping. I was really blown away by the idea and construction of the detector itself and this application is astounding. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IceCube_Neutrino_Observatory

Agreed. This is truly astounding. Neutrinos seem to encapsulate an unnaturally high degree of complexity and information in such a tiny package ;)

Formalism of Neutrino Oscillations

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1802.05781.pdf

Re: Neutrino tomography of Earth

#23

Post by sohkamyung »

bacon_waffle wrote: post #19
jboggan wrote: post #2

This is really brilliant, literally jaw-dropping. I was really blown away by the idea and construction of the detector itself and this application is astounding. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IceCube_Neutrino_Observatory

My favourite story about the construction of IceCube relates to the drilling of the holes to deploy the detector. They used two types of drill, which melt the firn (compacted snow) on top and ice lower down. One is a sort of conical heat exchanger, the other circulates water through a Big water heater on the surface. In the early days of South Pole Station (late 1950s), supplies were airdropped in - the cargo planes…

No mentions about finding meat here, but you might be interested in this story at IEEE Spectrum about the construction of IceCube from 2011 [1].

[1] https://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/astrophysics/icecube-the...

Re: Neutrino tomography of Earth

#24

Post by sohkamyung »

caf wrote: post #15

In theory, would IceCube be able to detect neutrinos generated by the same mechanism in the atmosphere of Venus?

In theory, yes. In practice, probably very difficult. They did detect a deficit in neutrinos from the direction of the moon though [1].

[1] https://icecube.wisc.edu/news/view/131

Re: Neutrino tomography of Earth

#25

Post by oh_sigh »

ArtWomb wrote: post #22
jboggan wrote: post #2

This is really brilliant, literally jaw-dropping. I was really blown away by the idea and construction of the detector itself and this application is astounding. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IceCube_Neutrino_Observatory

Agreed. This is truly astounding. Neutrinos seem to encapsulate an unnaturally high degree of complexity and information in such a tiny package ;) Formalism of Neutrino Oscillations https://arxiv.org/pdf/1802.05781.pdf

I always thought that if an alien civilization is trying to communicate with earth, they would do it via neutrinos and not radio waves, because if you know where you are communicating to, you don't need to worry about signal attenuation as much as with EM waves.

Re: Neutrino tomography of Earth

#27

Post by BurningFrog »

njarboe wrote: post #11
not2b wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The IceCube neutrino detector consists of about a cubic kilometer of ice. You're not going to put one of those in orbit.

But it would make a cool joint project for NASA and the NSF to fund. Capture a comet big enough that you could mine enough water to make a cubic kilometer sized detector in Earth orbit.

That could probably also wipe out half a continent if you mis-aim it...

Then again, it would look spectacular in the sky!

Re: Neutrino tomography of Earth

#30

Post by godelski »

phkahler wrote: post #3

Would it be feasible to put a source and detector in orbit so we could get high resolution CT images of the interior of the earth? IIRC the detector used here is very large, but there are smaller ones and a directed source would go a long way towards making the detection simpler.

I had this idea back in my undergrad when my professor first told me about neutrinos (which was his forte). The harder I looked the more infeasible it seemed. The big problem, is creating a detector. The reason this is a big problem is because neutrinos are so small and so neutral. How small? An electron is 511keV. A neutrino is So to place a detector in orbit we'd need one of two things. Space travel to become cheap enough where putting a massive body up is cost feasible, or a radically different understanding of how to detect neutrinos. (First is more likely)

The former also comes with some problems. You'll find more about this by asking why detectors are so far underground. And there's a big connection there to generating the resolution you'd need to map the interior of the Earth.

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