[ExI] found it!

[spike]

From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of John Clark
Sent: Saturday, August 12, 2017 10:36 AM
To: ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
Subject: Re: [ExI] found it!

 

 

 

On Sat, Aug 12, 2017 at 12:17 PM, spike <spike66 at att.net <mailto:spike66 at att.net> > wrote:

 

​> ​

Cool!  Neutrinos detected using a cool new instrument:

 

https://www.livescience.com/60058-neutrinos-never-before-seen-interaction.html?utm_source=notification

 …

 

>…It occurs to me that the military might be interested in Collar's work, his neutrino detector is very small light and portable, and nuclear reactors produce lots and lots of neutrinos, and nuclear submarines have nuclear reactors....

 

John K Clark  

 

 

 

Ja, John perhaps you can clarify on the next part: fissile material even way below critical mass, not reacting much at all, still creates high neutrino flux.  How high?  I haven’t calculated how many and the probability of detection, but if that flux is high enough and we find ways to tweak Collar’s instrument, perhaps we can create a mobile neutrino detector.

 

Something sticks in my mind from one of the books written by Emilio Segre about when the first plutonium core was delivered to Los Alamos.  He commented that the plutonium was slightly warm to the touch.  Look at plutonium’s density (or thermal mass) and conductivity, that core would have felt cool to the touch unless skerjillions of fissions warmed all that thermal mass.  Hmmm, how many?  

 

Going from memory, Pu239 has a half life of about 90 yrs, figure a subcritical fissile core is about, I don’t know, 20kg?  I don’t want to Google around on this stuff and get Mister NSA snooping down my neck wondering what I am up to, EVEN THOUGH I AM A FRIEND OF GOOD OLD MISTER NSA and wish him all the best and may he and his family be well and so on, so let’s just say 20 kg and let it go at that, and so 239 grams of that stuff is 6E23 atoms and so close enough to 100 moles or 6e25 atoms for single digit BOTECs in our heads, ja?  So about half of that or 3E25 of those decay in 100 times 3E7 seconds, or about close enough to about 1e16 decays per second in that subcritical core; tack on a factor of about 2 if you want a more precise exponential.  If we get an instrument which can detect one neutrino in a trillion at one meter, it should pick up a ten thousandth of that from 100 meters, which would be about a neutrino per second, ja? 

 

If we get something like this or we somehow tweak up Collar’s detectors, we could perhaps come up with fly-by drones which swoop past container ships sniffing for anomalous neutrinos, WHICH IS THE ONLY REASON I AM DOING THIS FLIGHT OF FANCY, GOOD OLD MISTER NSA old pal, if you are listening in (peace be upon you etc) completely peacefully speculating on a flight of fancy, which I am known to do, hoping we can use this tech to find bad guys with nukes of which I am not one, never was, never will be.

 

John, help us here.  Do we have any data on Collar’s marvelous new instrument?  How often it detects a neutrino?  As I write this, I get thinking and fear that my one in a trillion estimate is crazy optimistic: neutrinos don’t care enough about us to interact that often.

 

spike   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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