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Destruction of nuclear bombs using ultra-high energy neutrino beam (2003) [pdf]
- mvkel 3y agoTLDR Build a 600 mile long accelerator that shoots neutrino beams through the earth to make all nuclear bombs lightly explode, rendering them useless. Cool.
- stop50 3y agoNot really. Nuclear explosions don't mix well with organic life. And humans are often near nuclear weapons.
- simion314 3y agoFrom the POV of countries that do not have tons of such bombs is much better, also bombs exploding inside bunkers or submarines should make less damage then exploding on areas where it was computed it would make the most damage. But IMO this will be used to scare the nuclear weapons owners, they will need to invest a lot into shielding all their bombs or reducing the number of such bombs, probably at that time when this tech is possible we will have antimater bombs
- nyokodo 3y ago> they will need to invest a lot into shielding all their bombs There’s no way to shield your missiles from a beam that can penetrate right through the planet.
- Zetobal 3y agoI wonder what would happen to the housing market.
- cm2187 3y agoNope. Unless you take out all the thousands of nukes at the same instant, you are guaranteed to get at least some of them sent your way. Doesn’t take many to wipe out a large part of your population.
- arcade79 3y agoHow would "your way" be detected?
- zmgsabst 3y agoThe path of radioactivity through the missile facility would point at the facility with the beam, because the showers of induced particles would be along the same axis. You then nuke that country out of existence, as is standard policy if governments fear an attack on their strategic capability. You could also, eg, track the facility ingesting that incredible amount of power — whose signature would be basically impossible to hide from satellites.
- cm2187 3y agoPlus it's hard to build a 600 miles long accelerator without any of the major powers being aware of it.
- inasio 3y agoThe cool thing here is that you cannot shield from a neutrino beam, except by not being there
- MattGaiser 3y ago3% mixes a lot more with organic life than full power.
- zmgsabst 3y agoOkay — if you set off a 3KT bomb rather than leaving it safely stored, will they view you as having utilized a WMD against their nation?
- CobrastanJorji 3y agoOn the one hand, this seems crazy and impractical. On the other hand, compared to constructing 60,000 nuclear warheads, this seems comparatively sane and practical.
- mvkel 3y agoWhat's $100B among friends?
- dkjaudyeqooe 3y agoCool indeed. What could possibly go wrong.
- CobrastanJorji 3y agoNot much, compared against what could possibly go wrong with a non-exploded nuclear warhead.
- defrost 3y agoJanuary 24, 1961 Goldsboro, North Carolina
- jfoster 3y ago"... fizzle explosion with 3% of the full strength." The paper notes that this is too much, of course.
- mvkel 3y agoFor context, "cool" in my comment above was of the "neat" variety. With a sprinkle of sarcasm.
- wmeddie 3y agoI don't think I've ever seen a sci-fi rendition of this concept. It means that an advanced enough alien species could come to a planet, from orbit disable all nuclear weapons and power plants, then start their invasion. Not as cinematic as a Death Star planet explosion, but sounds like a good tactical move for a galactic empire.
- midasuni 3y agoIf you can travel between solar systems and have enough resources that you want to conquer (not just render inhabitable) a gravity well then you likely don’t need to worry about nukes - point defences will be able to detect and neutralise them before they got anywhere near your ship
- chii 3y agoIf you have the ability to travel between stars, it doesn't seem like there's still need to conquer a planet for resources - except for resources that aren't natural. For example, you can easily just get water from comets/asteroids, mineral resources from uninhabited planets (easier than to fight the inhabitants), and gas/fuel from the gas giants. However, one resource you cannot get is slaves. Therefore, i predict that any advanced civilization that can travel between stars would actually invade to capture the life forms as slaves, rather than to extract resources.
- nurettin 3y agoI'd imagine that kind of advancement would bring forth genetic engineering, clones and droids to perform physical tasks.
- adamcharnock 3y agoThis reminds me of the short story 'Ansible 15715'. I won't spoil it, but they had a use for us and it wasn't as slaves.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- jfoster 3y agoFor better or worse, autonomous weapons seem to be more practical, and something like this would be a pretty big deterrent against having nuclear weapons in the first place.
- Mountain_Skies 3y agoIgnoring the calls for it to be built by a "one world government", it would be difficult to do this in secret. Those that possess nuclear weapons would simply keep it from being built. Since it can't destroy all nuclear weapons at once but has to do so one at a time, using the power equal to the generation capacity of the UK, it wouldn't take long for any nuclear nation to detect this and simply nuke the source long before it could destroy even a small fraction of the existing nuclear stockpile. As a thought experiment, it's pretty good. But there's no real practical application.
- chii 3y agoThis is the same argument as having a nuclear missile shield that is 100% effective. If such a shield becomes operational, then there's no reason not to first strike anyone without such a shield, as there'd be no repercussions. So, by that same logic, the opponent knows this, and thus, it's in their interest to first strike, before the shield becomes operational. So the MAD doctrine no longer applies, and we'd have destroyed the world. Therefore, even starting to make such a technology will very quickly spiral the world into a nuclear appocalypse.
- waffleiron 3y agoThis is why the ABMT was in my opinion one of the most important recent arms control treaties. Making sure you cannot defend yourself against a second strike with high likelihood will prevent a first strike. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Ballistic_Missile_Treaty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Ballistic_Missile_Treaty
- denton-scratch 3y agoYeah, that reasoning seems broken to me. An ABM system can be developed surreptitiously; it wouldn't be easy to distinguish ordinary research launches from ABM test launches, or to distinguish ABMs from other kinds of air-defense missile. Patriots, for example, are supposedly able to defend against ballistic missiles. If you can't detect another state developing ABM systems, then the treaty becomes unenforceable, and is a destabilising factor.
- maxglute 3y agoIt's a neutrino beam... doesn't that mean it can be selectively directed to only disable SOME nuclear bombs... on the other side of the earth, where host country arsenal is not. E: looks like the beam is actually aimed, I was expecting some explosion that takes out all nukes simultaneously. good luck finding nuke subs. Although would a smaller version be viable ABM defense against nukes? Assuming you can hit them a few "minutes" and have them explode at 3% yield. Which is still kiloton range given full yeild of modern weapons.
- exe34 3y agoAnd spray the resulting mess over a large population. Maybe you can hit them before they reach your cities? Over the ocean, the explosion might not be too much of an issue.
- grandchild 3y agothe interesting thing is, the device may have to be built but possibly never operated. the existence of this device would make all nuclear-bomb-holders scramble to disarm them. OTOH we'd also have to know where the bombs are pretty precisely, if i understand correctly. i'd put the bombs on a nuclear airport luggage belt and have them go around in circles. makes a moving target out of them.
- justsomehnguy 3y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RT-23_Molodets https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RT-23_Molodets
- DaiPlusPlus 3y ago> the existence of this device would make all nuclear-bomb-holders scramble to disarm them Conversly, it may make some bomb-holders scrable to use their weapons as-intended - before they're rendered useless to them.
- justinclift 3y agoOr stimulate development of neutrino shielding.
- exe34 3y agoA system of underground railways! I wonder if Ian M Banks saw our future when he wrote about the planet of the dead...
- SJC_Hacker 3y agoThey say it would cost $100 billion USD That is like only about 12% of the US defense budget. And I'm pretty sure, much less than what the US has spent on ICBM interceptor research in the last 30 years. So if it was feasible, I think it would have already been built. Not necessarily as a first strike weapon, but definitely something take out the birds in the atmosphere once they flew
- maxglute 3y ago160 billion adjusted for inflation. Meanwhile US nuclear modernzation is 500B until 230, 1.5T until 2050. Seems like a bargin.
- irjustin 3y agoIf you look at the technical requirements, 1000 TeV seems impossible since LHC is at ~13TeV even if we optimize it for a weapon instead of science. Not sure how to get a dollar figure if the tech isn't remotely possible.
- lom 3y agoIn this paper 100TeV are called “totally ridiculous” but now scientists want to build a new hadron collider which would have that capacity: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39271297 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39271297
- mkl 3y agoIt's 10 Tesla magnets that are called ridiculous. The paper also requires 1000 TeV, not 100.
- lom 3y agoOh, blame my reading comprehension skills then
- Animats 3y agoCurrent record for magnets: 45 teslas.
- rcxdude 3y agoThere's more than just raw strength that goes into making magnets for a collider. It's the combination of strength, uniformity, and enclosed volume which makes things difficult.
- mkl 3y agoThey need enough for 1000km of accelerator though. LHC has 10,000 superconducting magnets for 26.7km (some can temporarily go up to 7.7 Tesla).
- pmontra 3y agoThe energy in the paper is 1000 TeV, ten times as much.
- xg15 3y agoWorth noting that with "disable" here they mean "trigger an immediate explosion with ~3% of their actual yield". That can still be a lot, expose radioactivity, etc: > When the neutrino beam hits a bomb, it will cause the fizzle explosion with 3% of the full strength. It seems that it is not possible to decrease the magnitude of the explosion smaller than this number at this stage. It is important to decrease this number to destroy bombs safely. We are not sure what this means when the plutonium or uranium is used to ignite the hydrogen bomb. We may just break the bomb or may lead to a full explosion. If such a tech existed, it could give a new edge to MAD though, because just storing nuclear bombs would suddenly carry a risk of "spontaneous" nuclear explosions. This might already be enough to have a chilling effect. (Then again, it might not...)
- perlgeek 3y agoIt would boost the navy's ego dramatically, because then nukes carried on submarines would have another strategic edge over silo-based missiles.
- Someone 3y agoI bet the Air Force would ask for loads and loads more money so that they could resurrect the MX “racetrack” concept. https://www.airandspaceforces.com/article/peacekeeper-by-fits-and-starts/ https://www.airandspaceforces.com/article/peacekeeper-by-fit...: “In 1979, Carter acknowledged that fixed-based missiles were “becoming vulnerable to attack” and authorized full-scale development of MX to be deployed in Multiple Protective Shelters, a “shell-game” arrangement in the deserts of Nevada and Utah. It provided for 200 “racetracks” or long oval roadways. Each of them was a 15-mile closed loop with 23 spur roads leading off of it to concrete and steel shelters. One MX would be assigned to each racetrack, able to take cover in any of the 23 shelters. For arms control verification, the shelters would have a removable “plug” in the roof, to be opened at specific intervals to allow the Soviets to see that there was only one MX per racetrack. “The system consists of a missile, a transporter or fancy truck, a shelter or concrete bunker, a launcher decoy, and some cheap roads,” said Deputy Undersecretary of Defense Seymour Zeiberg. “For security reasons, a two-and-one-half-acre plot around the shelters will be fenced off. … The fenced area is the same as we use in the Minuteman bases. We expect that farming and grazing can be right up to the fence. … The roads connecting the shelters will be as simple as we can get away with.” The footprint of the project was significantly greater than that, said local ranchers and farmers who were opposed to it. True, the total “public exclusion zone” was 33 square miles, but the clusters were not bunched together into a single space. The total deployment area took in about 15,000 square miles, some of which might be closed off in times of increased security. That, along with more than 10,000 miles of connecting and service roads, would change the character of the desert region. Furthermore, the project would use large amounts of water, especially during construction, and deplete scarce ground water reserves. The governors of Nevada and Utah did not want the missiles in their states.“
- perihelions 3y agoLooks you could easily defend against this thing by storing nuclear warheads in an empty cavern, suspended by ropes in midair. Most of the heating isn't from neutrinos hitting the target, but hitting dense matter in a wide vicinity of the target, creating showers of secondary radiation. So creating a void around the target should give you many orders of magnitude of shielding. Come to thing of it, orbital nuclear weapons would be pretty safe too?
- kristjansson 3y agoWe cannot allow a neutrino beam gap!
- irjustin 3y agoWow super cool, didn't realize that was a possibility. 1000 TeV when we're currently at ~13 TeV seems like one problem. 1000km ring requiring ~10 Tesla powered magnets likely be another. Those "technical difficulties" aside seems like aiming it would be a massive problem. Would need the beam to exit and that exit would have to be movable - realistically pointing "down". Not like you can take a beam like that and just turn corners, haha. That "2d" picture of it hitting through the earth is ms-paint level optimistic. Would nuclear weapons be the only thing affected? Feels like it would be bad to be on the other end of this thing if the beam spread was too big.
- pmontra 3y agoTo aim the beam to targets on Earth you have to build it in space and be able to maneuver that pretty large Death Star. Probably just a ring instead of a sphere. The invisible beam is probably a non starter for movies. If somebody will put this idea on screen they'll find a way to make neutrinos visible.
- somenameforme 3y agoA highly insightful quote, oddly enough from Jurassic Park: --- John Hammond: I don't think you're giving us our due credit. Our scientists have done things which nobody's ever done before. Dr. Ian Malcolm: Yeah, yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn't stop to think if they should. --- Imagine this were possible. You'd have just destroyed what is likely the primary reason that the past ~80 years have been this weird blip in history where there's been no major and unrestrained war between two world powers. The most obvious embodiment of this is the reason that the Cold War is now called the Cold War, and not WW3. There's also the reality that in this new WW3 which we'd near to immediately create, we'd likely see the rapid emergence of the chemical, biological, and other weapons that every major nation totally aren't developing. Of course we do stand a good chance of destroying ourselves with nukes, but it's not entirely clear to me that we stand less of a chance of destroying ourselves without them. And adding to this equation is that if the nukes are gone on day 1, then WW3 starts on day 2.
- jusssi 3y agoThere's a decent chance we're already watching the prologue to WW3, we just don't know it yet.
- fullstackchris 3y agoWith absolutely no information about the future, there's actually no way to claim anything has a 'decent' chance.
- jusssi 3y agoWe have the present, where we got: * Russia showing how to get ahead with invading your neighbors for conquest in 21st century * Everyone else with expansionist plans taking notes and making schemes * Russia again, pouring gasoline to every fire they see * And the usual powder keg that the Middle East is Meanwhile nationalism is on the increase everywhere, military spending is breaking records in anticipation. Millions of people relocate because of wars and warming climate. So it's looking to me like this one will get a lot bigger before it dies down. How big before it counts as a World War?
- sigmoid10 3y agoNote to people who haven't read the paper: This isn't seriously about building a nuclear bomb destroying super-ray. The authors even admit that this is waaaay beyond our current technology. The whole paper feels like a con attempt by the authors to talk governments into building smaller muon colliders as an intermediate step. Of course these smaller colliders could also be used to study concepts of a higher energy collider that could produce anti-nuke rays. But for the most part, these smaller colliders would be incredible physics discovery machines. Muon colliders are basically the holy grail of experimental particle physics. They offer higher energy collisions than electron colliders because muons are much heavier, but they also offer higher precision than proton colliders because muons are elementary particles. The difficulty is sourcing and accelerating them. This is insanely complicated, which is why noone has done it yet. But if you can talk some government knobheads into building it to study forced nuclear disarmament or whatever, the reason why they do it doesn't really matter. In some sense the authors were already successfuly by triggering all this discussion here on HN about the purely theoretical implications on geopolitics (rather than the very real, down-to-earth implications for modern particle physics).
- kaptainscarlet 3y agoThank you for reading it for us. It's not uncommon these days for one to comment on a piece of writing after glancing at the title.
- bluish29 3y agoI agree with that. But this was expected reaction of HN. I will take your comment as a chance to quote the P5 report [1] > There is a compelling physics case for constructing a 10 TeV or more pCM collider. Such a collider would search for direct evidence and quantum imprints of new particles and forces at unprecedented energies. There are several approaches: a 10 TeV muon collider, a 100 TeV proton-proton collider such as FCC-hh at CERN, or possibly a 10 TeV high-energy e+e– or γ-γ collider based on the wakefield acceleration technology. Any of them would enable a comprehensive physics portfolio that includes ultimate measurements in the Higgs sector, a broad search program providing access to new hidden sectors by producing a substantially higher mediator mass or probing even smaller coupling, and opportunities to produce new particles directly. All options for a 10 TeV pCM collider are new technologies under development and R&D is required before we can embark on building a new collider. [1] https://www.usparticlephysics.org/2023-p5-report/the-recommended-particle-physics-program https://www.usparticlephysics.org/2023-p5-report/the-recomme...
- tgsovlerkhgsel 3y agoAs expected, the example application given is only one option, and this is basically a long-range radiation death ray: > We are certainly aware of the fact that this kind of device can not only target the nuclear bombs but other kinds of weapons of mass destruction and also, unfortunately, any kind of living object including human. If I understand it correctly, from skimming the paper, this depends on the beam passing through earth without interaction and then "emerging" (starting to interact) at a precise point. Is that how these beams work at least in theory, i.e. will a "perfect" beam emerge in a point rather than distributed along a line due to the process being probabilistic? Of course, getting the beam perfect would then be the next challenge. (Conveniently, this part of the problem seems to have been left for a separate publication.)
- throwaway202402 3y agoWhat would happen to nuclear power plants, in the event a Ultra-High Energy Neutrino Beam would hit them?
- denton-scratch 3y agoOn my reading, the paper envisages that bombs will be destroyed by "cooking" the conventional explosive shell untilit explodes chaoticly [sp?]. In the event that the bomb's fissionable core is stored separately from the conventional shell, then it might induce the fissionable material to melt. So I guess that if you targeted a reactor, you could induce a meltdown, given enough time-on-target.
- j1mmie 3y agoThis is actually a great plot for a supervillain in a movie. Simultaneously detonate all nuclear weapons on Earth, albeit at 3% of it's power. That would seriously fuck us up.
- lukan 3y agoWhy? Most nukes are underground, so most of the fallout would be contained. And the result would be a world not fearing anymore for accidental or intentionally nuclear anhilation. So most would consider that supervillain a super hero.
- exe34 3y agoIt would work if the villain sells conventional weapons - we've been itching for a conventional world war for a while now, and nukes are the only reason we've not been able to.
- lukan 3y agoSince it seems, we are heading there anyway, I would feel safer with the bombs out of the way.
- exe34 3y agoNo, the nukes in the hands of superpowers are the only reason we have had peace for so long.
- lukan 3y agoPeace? You mean there was no world war, but there were and are plenty of wars going on all the time. Also it is quite a risky bet, to assume all the actors will remain rational.
- exe34 3y agoThe only two actors capable of inflicting gigadeath are still the US and Russia. Both of them are ultimately run by oligarchs who want to remain alive, and have a population to lord over. The actors who are genuinely irrational don't really have the number of nukes to do more than cause ~megadeath. This sort of thing would only happen once and then the actors would cease to exist.
- nxobject 3y agoIs this a festschrift paper?
- pmontra 3y ago> We are certainly aware of the fact that this kind of device can not only target the nuclear bombs but other kinds of weapons of mass destruction and also, unfortunately, any kind of living object including human. But we should emphasize that the device itself is not a weapon of mass destruction. The reason is as follows: The calculation in section 2 and section 3 shows that it takes 1 second for this device to cover a 1 m2 with the radiation dose of 1 SV. It takes more than a year to cover the area of 10 km2 with this value of dose per unit area. It is extremely unlikely that no measure is taken after a few minutes of exposure of this kind. I don't get it: it seems to be dangerous for people inside the beam, but it isn't? What kind of measures you can take if a city is aimed to with an invisible beam, probably from space? Yeah, telescopes can see where the beam is aimed to buy then what? Neutrinos go through every shielding. What am I missing? The only thing I can think about is that to build that structure in space you have to be sure to suppress any missile from Earth and to win the war that your enemies will fight against you down here. Those are probably the measures to be taken.
- PhilipRoman 3y agoThey're just saying it would be an extremely inefficient weapon. You could kill a couple people with it but so could a drone or some deadly gas.
- krisoft 3y ago> only thing I can think about is that to build that structure in space you have to be sure to suppress any missile from Earth and to win the war that your enemies will fight against you down here. Absolutely. There are many technologies where if your enemy manages to create it you are already in an un-winnable situation. For example nuclear warheads pre-positioned in orbit with solid reentry boosters. If you have that you can nuke anyone with seconds of warning. The correct counter to this strategy from your enemy is to kill you before you can implement this plan. Because of that you will want to sneak it by your enemy. But with this… even that is hard. Surely they will see when you light up this much energy generation no matter how sneaky you built it up? Unless you provide some plausible explanation, like hide it in an active carbon capture scheme or something. Or you might build it in such a way as to avoid attribution. For example make a very stealthy von-neumann probe launched at the asteroid belt designed to reconfigure matter there for solar power harvesting and build this particle accelerator in-situ. You can disguise the initual launch as a failed interplanetary mission perhaps. And when it lights up pretend you didn’t know who did it?
- bluish29 3y agoThe title need (2003) at the end, as this is when this paper published on arXiv.
- matijsvzuijlen 3y agoLinking to the abstract instead would have been nice.
- bowsamic 3y agoWhy would anyone want to do that? I don't think any government is going to want to disable all nuclear bombs on Earth
- denton-scratch 3y agoI would have thought only nuclear powers wouldn't want to disable all nuclear bombs on earth.
- dang 3y agoRelated: Destruction of Nuclear Bombs Using Ultra-High Energy Neutrino Beam (2003) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23528970 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23528970 - June 2020 (85 comments)
- gmerc 3y agoA worthy wallfacer plan.
- beefnugs 3y agoHmm so what is the answer : current plane technology current prices how close does it have to fly to known launch site?
- denton-scratch 3y agoThe authors seem surprisingly sanguine, even enthusiastic, about the prospect of a World Government. To me, it sounds like the whole world stomping on your face forever.