CERN researchers have observed and generated high-energy neutrino radiation • Hacker News Board

Re: CERN researchers have observed and generated high-energy neutrino radiation

#51

Post by kadoban » Mon, Mar 27, 2023, 7:16 PM UTC

jjk166 wrote: post #50

kadoban wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there even a theoretical way that this could happen? Seems essentially impossible. The whole thing with neutrinos is they just _don't_ interact with anything except _extremely_ rarely.

No. There is some evidence that a large flux of neutrinos can very slightly alter the rate of some nuclear beta decay (basically the decay which would release a neutrino can't if there are too many neutrinos already around it), but that won't do anything to trigger a nuclear weapon or nuclear plant meltdown. Even producing enough neutrinos to have a detectable effect at all would require a tremendous amount of energy…

> The only place in the universe where the neutron flux gets high enough to actually delay decay for a meaningful amount of time is in the core of a supernova, which is one way heavy elements are produced.

That's very cool.

Re: CERN researchers have observed and generated high-energy neutrino radiation

#52

Post by koheripbal » Mon, Mar 27, 2023, 10:25 PM UTC

throwaway5752 wrote: post #16

Scarblac wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://what-if.xkcd.com/73/

Great line in this one: [...]The physicist who mentioned this problem to me told me his rule of thumb for estimating supernova-related numbers: However big you think supernovae are, they're bigger than that. Here's a question to give you a sense of scale: Which of the following would be brighter, in terms of the amount of energy delivered to your retina: 1. A supernova, seen from as far away as the Sun is from the Ea…

I mean, I knew the supernova would be brighter, but BY NINE orders of magnitude was still surprising! wow!

Re: CERN researchers have observed and generated high-energy neutrino radiation

#53

Post by teawrecks » Fri, Mar 31, 2023, 1:07 AM UTC

mynameisvlad wrote: post #25

teawrecks wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We would see decisions being made that aren't physically possible with current technology. Also the number of people who would need to keep something like this a secret would be on par with that of a fake moon landing. If their application of the technology were so secret that we couldn't tell it existed, then it wasn't worth whatever they paid.

Presumably it would be used in the case where a split-second decision is the difference between success and failure. > If their application of the technology were so secret that we couldn't tell it existed, then it wasn't worth whatever they paid. I would posit that, were a system like this feasible and already implemented by the military, we wouldn’t hear about this until the football has to be activated. There is n…

That's fair. The original post was suggesting corporations were actively using it for lower trade latency. That seems very unlikely. But having the technology in our back pocket for military use? That's believable.

Though I think everyone secretly knows that, in the Mexican standoff that is a nuclear stalemate, if one side launches all their nukes, the best outcome for everyone is for the other side to just let it happen. This would afford any survivors the best chance at rebuilding. The important part is the threat of what you can do, not what you actually do.