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Can we harvest that energy?
by m3kw9 2y ago
Can we harvest that energy?
- AnimalMuppet 2y agoThis particle spread this energy through a volume of seawater a few km deep in the Mediterranean. It's going to raise the temperature of that volume a few billionths of a degree, if that. So, no, we can't.
- the_arun 2y agoWhat if our existing solar panels are optimized to detect these? Then will it improve the quality of solar panels to capture more energy from sunlight as well? Sorry, I'm no expert in this - asking more of a curiosity.
- ars 2y agoIt's an enormous amount of energy packed into a single tiny particle. But it's still just a single tiny particle, so it's not a lot of total energy. It's like how you can lift a heavy weight for a second, but that's all you can do. You would need to be able to lift it for hours to be useful as a replacement for a crane. Same idea: Intensity vs total work.
- mr_toad 2y agoIf we had the ability to detect neutrinos in such a small volume as a solar panel they’d be immensely valuable for communication - we’d be able to beam signals directly through the Earth, or through deep water.
- calebio 2y agoFollowing that same line, if we had that ability, it would be useful for communicating to deep submarines like the U.S. used to do with Project Sanguine[0] and ELF waves :) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Sanguine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Sanguine
- tadfisher 2y agoNeutrinos interact extremely weakly with ordinary matter, which is why the detectors are typically huge volumes of water. Even then, the neutrinos interact with the purpose-built detectors on the order of one in a trillion. A neutrino power generator is not a feasible thing to build.
- TheOtherHobbes 2y agoUnless you're next to an exploding star, in which case you have other problems/opportunities.
- tsimionescu 2y agoThere's nothing to optimize here, neutrinos just interact very very weakly with anything else because they don't carry charge (so no electrical interactions), don't carry color charge (so no nuclear interactions), don't carry weak charge (so no weak force interactions) and have tiny tiny masses, but they are still bosons (so don't act as field carriers like photons do, they're just regular matter). Their low chance of interacting with matter is a fundamental property of them, there's nothing you can do about it through technology, just like you can't create heavier electrons or weaker quarks.
- gus_massa 2y ago> don't carry weak charge (so no weak force interactions) Left neutrino have weak hypercharge, so they are produce by weak interactions and are detected using the weak interaction. And also gravity. Right neutrinos (if they exist) have no weak hypercharge so they only interact by gravity.
- tsimionescu 2y agoThanks for the correction!
- __MatrixMan__ 2y agoIt might improve the quality of neutrino astronomy to have the world's solar panels also be neutrino detectors.
- __MatrixMan__ 2y agoNot for that particular neutrino, it's gone. But yes, my home (and yours) is being heated by neutrino power as we speak. It's not a significant enough amount of energy to make a dent in the utility bill however.
- Sharlin 2y agoMost inefficient thermal power plant possible: utilize the difference in neutrino flux between the hemisphere that's open to space vs. the hemisphere where Earth is in the way. But now I'm wondering what percentage of the useful thermal power in a nuclear power plant is produced by the neutrinos created in the reactions (the infinitesimally small fraction that happen to interact with the matter within the reactor, that is).
- __MatrixMan__ 2y agoOn the contrary, it would have to be efficient indeed to do anything useful underneath all of the shielding that we'd need to keep those baser forms of radiation at bay. Gamma rays: yuck.