Is it possible to harvest Neutrinos?

Question

Into some kind of storage device.

Answer 1

I can't really add much to the answer BIMS Lewis has put up - thats probably the best answer you could get.

If you could store them what would you do with them. When you let them out of storage they will just carry on doing what neutrinos do, i.e. go straight through everything without stopping!

At CERN they have muon storage rings - muons are in the same family and group of particles as neutrino, but interact with electromagnetic force where neutrinos don't. There are also links to 'neutrino factory' pages (a couple appear to be dead links) which I haven't read but may interest you.

Answer 2

It's going to be rather tricky to harvest a massless particle that insists on moving at 300million m/s, doesn't respond to a magnetic field or electric field and the strong nuclear force does nothing to it either. This pesky little critter generally shows contempt for everything and you've only got a 50:50 chance of stopping it with a sheet of lead thats 20 light years thick.

If you don't care too much about how you store it then it's possible to trap one or two using the weak nuclear force and a swimming pool full of beach. It helps if you bury the pool a km or so underground to hide it from cosmic rays which'll otherwise misbehave themselves by interfering with your pool of Silly Bang. A neutrino isn't going to be phased by a kilometre or so of rock (or indeed 12800km of rock if it's coming from the Australia direction) so burying is good.

The chlorine nucleus in the bleach however might just get shirty with the neutrino and absorb it. This turns a neutron into a proton (neutron + neutrino = proton + electron) via the Weak Nuclear Force. Now this is good because that turns Chlorine, a nasty, very reactive chemical in a compound in the bleach, into Argon, a nice inert gas which floats out of your bleach (you may need to flush it through with helium to hurry it out).

After a few weeks or so you'll have harvested maybe as many as 12 neutrinos. You can get them back out of the argon simply by being patient. Argon 39 is radioactive and will decay via Beta radiation back to Chlorine 39 within a week or so. As it does so it releases your neutrino.

Why you would want to do this and what possible use you could have for doing it is, however, beyond my comprehension.

Ask and the truth will be told

Answer 3

No. Neutrinos are so small that even detecting those particles very difficult. For example, in every second, a great number of neutrinos, coming from outer space, pass through the earth. Only several of them interact with the matter inside earth's crust.

Answer 4

Neutrino's? Well that's the name for Fords next mid engined car sorted then.

Answer 5

Here's a site to read. Outside the nucleus, the decay so you can't keep them in the fridge for very long.

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