27 ms·
The problem with that at present is our only way to detect neutrinos is by using loads of mass, usually ice, water, or xenon. It’s going to be tough to launch a
by gotocake 8y ago
The problem with that at present is our only way to detect neutrinos is by using loads of mass, usually ice, water, or xenon. It’s going to be tough to launch a glacier or a vast tank of xenon to make up the body of a detector. We’d need some novel form of detection that isn’t dependent on the occasional reaction of a neutrino as it passes theough a huge body of something. Sadly, that isn’t on the horizon and would ironically require a better understanding of neutrino interactions before it could be done, if it could be done.
- FreeFull 8y agoEven worse, most neutrino detectors rely on being under thick masses of rock to filter out things like cosmic rays, which would otherwise completely flood the detectors.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y agoSo what you're saying is we need to capture an icy asteroid and stick a probe in it?
- BurningFrog 8y agoAnd somehow not have it melt next to the sun.
- lisper 8y agoThat would actually be the least of your worries. Ice is actually a pretty good insulator because it doesn't convect. Comets are giant snowballs. They regularly venture close to the sun and only lose a small percentage of their mass.
- simonh 8y agoThe ice would need to be very clear, surrounded by a grid of detectors, and all of that surrounded by a minimum of several hundreds of metres of rock on all sides. The reason it needs to be clear is the detector watches for flashes of Cherenkov radiation.
- Taniwha 8y agocough .... IceCube .... cough
- magicalhippo 8y agoIceCube uses the entire earth as a shield. Basically only neutrinos going up through the detector is considered.
- Taniwha 8y agoI guess that depends on how you define 'up' (are you looking at the entire planet or standing on the pole) As I understand it these days they grab all samples and are now able to distinguish 'downward' coming neutrinos from cosmic rays in software
- flukus 8y agoHow flooded are we talking? A detector in orbit would regularly have an earth sized mass of rock between it and the sun so the difference could be teased out statistically for low values of flooded.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- flukus 8y agoDon't we use water/xenon for it's combination of density and transparency? I wonder if there are other things we could use to shrink detectors at the expense of missing many wavelengths produced by collisions?
- dTal 8y agoA large detector also has the advantage of being a large target. Even if you managed to make a detector a thousand times smaller while keeping it just as sensitive as our current ones, you'd still detect a thousand times fewer neutrinos.