Vandana Singh comments : Very very nicely written, Divya! The article is succinct and at the same time gives a good idea of the mysteries involved with the neutrino. Thank you, and keep up the good work! Vandana
Raj Shekar comments : Hi Divya Its a pleasent surprise to see stuff like this from your peer group...:) Its great...keep it going.
One construct I read somewhere on the character of neutrinos..was an approximation that it would take an equivalent of a lead wall around 4 light years thick to stop one in its tracks..correct me if Im wrong...:)
In that context, it makes one marvel on the human ingenuity that makes it possible to even measure its presence here on Earth...is it not?
Divya comments : Dear Vandana and Raj, Thank you both for your kind and encouraging words:)
Raj, I'm not aware of that speculation but if so, I don't think our ghostly friend can cease to intrigue.
The rare occasions when a neutrino collides with another particle requires large quantities of material for the neutrinos to collide with.
The detector in the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory consists of a 40- foot-wide acrylic sphere containing 1,000 tons of heavy water, in which the two hydrogen atoms of the water molecules have been replaced with deuterium atoms, a heavier version of hydrogen. The sphere is submerged within a 10-story cavity that was carved out of a nickel mine 1 1/4 miles underground and filled with 40,000 tons of ordinary water. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/19/science/19NEUT.html
Raj Shekar comments : Hi Divya.. Yes it sure is ghostly...with a 50% chance of 1 light year of lead stopping a neutrino...so I gather. In theory, it supposedly averages 22 light years.. A wow...is it not.
MORE ABOUT ITS GHOSTLINESS IS AT http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/particles/neutrino.html
"The mean free path of a neutrino in matter is about 22 lightyears in lead and having the earth in the path makes little difference."
Heres another partial reference..to its penetrative ability to be used in military underwater communication..It was the first I had read about a possible use
RFC 1217 ULSNET BAA April 1991
4. Jam-Resistant Underwater Communication
The ULS system proposed in (2) above has the weakness that it is readily jammed by simple depth charge explosions or other sources of acoustic noise (e.g., Analog Equipment Corporation DUCK-TALK voice synthesizers linked with 3,000 AMP amplifiers). An alternative is to make use of the ultimate in jam resistance: neutrino transmission. For all practical purposes, almost nothing (including several lightyears of lead) will stop a neutrino. There is, however, a slight cross-section which can be exploited provided that a cubic mile of sea water is available for observing occasional neutrino-chlorine interactions which produce a detectable photon burst. Thus, we have the basis for a highly effective, extremely low speed communication system for communicating with submarines.
Eric Weber comments : I Theroize that Gravity is a Magnetic field. Because the Earth's magnetic-sphere balances out electric, and proton particles, like a magnet balances out positve and negative charges. The Northan lights are plasma/electro-magnetic surges burning off the magneto-sphere. The Aither of legend is the magnetosphere itself. The Earth uses plasma, gas, liquid, and solids to magneticaly balance the Earth's Gravity!
