Question for any experts (or even non-experts) concerning neutrinos

[TroubleMan]

If a neutrino has mass (very very little mass, but mass nonetheless) and a photon has no mass, why can't we "catch" neutrinos like we catch photons?

Is it because photons are carriers of electromagnetic energy and they "hit" the electron field in an atom?

(added on edit) Also, could it be that the photon is a boson, and that the neutrino is a fermion....does that make a difference?

Billions of neutrinos pass through us every minute, so I was thinking if there way some way to create a, for lack of a better term, neutrino catcher. I'm not talking about those huge pools of heavy water they have now to measure neutrinos. I'm talking something that catches every neutrino that pass through it.

If you could harness the energy of neutrinos like you can with solar power, it might provide a great energy source. Sure the amount of energy from one neutrino is infinitesimally small, but we have billions pass through us each minute. Also, you could put a huge neutrino catcher underground and it wouldn't care if it's day or night or what the weather is. As long as the sun is burning, it would provide energy. It would be like underground solar panels.

The problem is that neutrinos rarely react with anything. The object to catch them in would have to be ridiculously dense (probably so dense the earth couldn't hold it). Another solution that I was thinking of is to have some sort of field generated as part of your "catcher" that would either give the neutrinos charge or add mass to them.

How would you add mass to them?....by generating some form of distorted Higgs field inside of your catcher that gives them just enough mass to be caught, and then catching them in the lower portion. Of course we hardly understand the Higgs field (or fields?) now, so just getting to that point is a whole different problem by itself.

How would you add charge to them?.....I don't know. I haven't any speculations at all on this.

....

These were just some random speculations I was having. I was curious that if anybody thinks there's a way that someday we could harness the power of the billions of neutrinos passing through us every minute.

[tocqueville]

1. one light year (~1016m) of lead to block half of them

The neutrino is an elementary particle. It has fractional spin () and is therefore a fermion. Its mass is very small compared to most other particles, although recent experiments (see Super-Kamiokande and Sudbury Neutrino Observatory) have shown it to be nonzero. Since it is an electrically neutral lepton, the neutrino interacts neither by way of the strong nor the electromagnetic force, but only through the weak force and gravitation.

Due to the fact that the cross section in weak nuclear interactions is very small, neutrinos can pass through ordinary matter almost unhindered. For typical neutrinos produced in the sun (energy of a few MeV), it would take approximately one light year (~1016m) of lead to block half of them. Detection of neutrinos is therefore very challenging as it has to rely either on large detection volumes or artificially produced neutrino beams of high intensity and energy, since the interaction probability is roughly proportional to the energy of the neutrino.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutrinos

[TroubleMan]

4. That's the answer I was seeking....

It's only affected by gravity and the weak force.

It's so small that the gravity doesn't stop it. Also the weak interactions are so small, that is a rarity that they "hit" them or are affected by them.

I understand now.

[Spinzonner]

2. What in the heck do you mean by 'catch'

and how do you propose to manipulate an entity that is all but completely non-interactive.

You're trying to apply macro concepts to a part of existance that operates by vastly different principles.

[TroubleMan]

6. What I mean by "catch" is to cause neutrinos to interact with it.

That's what I'm trying to envision, something that would react with neutrinos.

They don't react with anything.....so if you had something to react with them, it wouldn't have any interference from anything.

If you had something to react with them, it would get pummeled by billions of them per second. This pummeling would produce energy.

[Spinzonner]

7. And the universe would be completely different

So, you want to change how everything works but keep everything the same.

[TroubleMan]

9. No just create some material that they would interact with.

I'm not trying to change anything.

I'm just saying....they have mass and are moving at the speed of light. If we had a net where the holes were too small for them to pass through, then we would catch them.

However, something like that would be too dense. Instead we need to find some other way. I'm trying to speculate on what that way would be.

[Kraklen]

11. Neutrinos don't move at the speed of light.

Since they have a non-zero rest mass.

[TroubleMan]

12. Oops, you're right

nt.

[skids]

3. There is one.

See here:

http://www.anl.gov/Media_Center/Argonne_News/news03/an030825.html

As to whether we can ever harness power from them, well, noone but con artists have suggested that seriously so far, as far as I know. There are lots of interesting things going on in the area of "zero point energy," but nothing conclusive yet. Usually these things go backwards, though -- someone notices an effect, and then tries to postulate how ZPE could be the cause. That's not good science, really. And most of the claims are bullshit.

If I had to pick one that is the most likely of being true, though, it would be the work at jlnlabs on atomic hydrogen. This guy's material isn't scientifically rigorous, but he's a very skilled builder and seems to be sincere. I don't recall ever seeing him spam for money, he just wants to build all the weirdo contraptions he sees claims about and see if they work.

http://jlnlabs.imars.com/index.htm

All this aside, really a "free energy" source is only important for space travel. We have plenty of energy sources available here on the surface, and the technology to harness and store them is improving --- not as fast as it could, but it is improving.

[TroubleMan]

8. I saw that....now think of something like that which catches every one

that passes through it.

Not just a few of them, but all of them.

Also, I'm not trying to get into zero point energy, but instead envision something like a huge solar panel, but it catches neutrinos instead of photons.

[Ian David]

10. What you really need is something based on Dihydrogen Monoxide

I know they use vast quantities of Dihydrogen Monoxide in underground proton decay protectors.

[dweller]

5. and for a completely alternative view ...

http://www.geocities.com/therapeuter/yixuai.html

dp