Slashdot Mirror
Physicists Produce Antineutrino Map of the World
KentuckyFC (1144503) writes "The origin of the heat generated inside the Earth is one of the great mysteries of geophysics. Researchers know that almost all this heat is generated by the decay of radioactive elements such as potassium-40, thorium-232 and uranium-238. But what they don't know is how these elements are distributed inside the planet and how much heat each contributes. In the next few years, they hope to get some answers thanks to the emerging science of antineutrino geophysics. Since radioactive decay produces antineutrinos, an experiment that measures these particles coming out of the Earth should provide a detailed picture of the distribution of the elements within it.
But there's a problem. Nuclear reactors also produce copious numbers of antineutrinos and these can swamp the signal from inside the Earth. What's needed is a map showing the distribution of reactor antineutrinos so that geophysicists can choose the best places to put their experiments. Just such a map is exactly what a team of nuclear physicists has now produced. The map shows that planned experiments in Hawaii and Curacao, off the coast of Venezuela, are in excellent locations and that Japan has recently become a much better site thanks to the shut down of the country's nuclear industry following the 2011 Tohoku earthquake. But a European experiment currently being planned in south-east France doesn't come off so well."
But there's a problem. Nuclear reactors also produce copious numbers of antineutrinos and these can swamp the signal from inside the Earth. What's needed is a map showing the distribution of reactor antineutrinos so that geophysicists can choose the best places to put their experiments. Just such a map is exactly what a team of nuclear physicists has now produced. The map shows that planned experiments in Hawaii and Curacao, off the coast of Venezuela, are in excellent locations and that Japan has recently become a much better site thanks to the shut down of the country's nuclear industry following the 2011 Tohoku earthquake. But a European experiment currently being planned in south-east France doesn't come off so well."
So, would this map let them locate any 'sneaky'/unreported reactors?
I should think that some people would like to be able to say "gee, I see something in country x which shouldn't be there, we should have a closer look."
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Hey super dorks, what has your socialist betters done for you lately? Is this another media cover up or not? Sons of Obama doing the jobs Americans won't do, is that about it?
Does anyone think that the rule of law, equally applied is what makes for a civilization? If we do not maintain our civilization then in the end things are going to be very nasty indeed. Wouldn't it be nice for laws to be adhered to by all our neighbors, and those in charge also?
Oh well...
http://therightscoop.com/200-teens-riot-in-louisville-sat-night-robbing-assaulting-people-man-claims-victim-of-attack-the-night-before/
"Riots broke out in Louisville, Kentucky on Saturday night, according to WDRB News, when 200 teens began robbing and assaulting people, including a 13-year-old girl and a man trying to help her. A woman who was parked in her car with two children in the back seat said she was also assaulted by a group of teens. She told police they repeatedly punched her and threw trash cans at her car.
WDRB News also reports that a large group of teens robbed a convenience store, assaulting the clerk as he tried to shut the doors on them. They actually have surveillance video of this attack and all the teens shown appeared to be black.
Police say there were another three victims of assaults in three separate attacks that night and they all had to be taken to the hospital. The mayor is now calling for calm in the city."
Shouldn't we send a manned exploration team to the center of the Earth? After all, if sending people into a deadly vacuum is important, it must also be important to visit the center of the Earth. You know, to inspire new generations and the spinoffs? Stuff like that?
Researchers know that almost all this heat is generated by the decay of radioactive elements such as potassium-40, thorium-232 and uranium-238
Half-life of (K40, U238, Th232) is (1.2, 4.5, 14.0) x 10^9 years. Age of Earth is 4.5 x 10^9 years. That explains why we still have such elements...
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
Faced with a choice between clean, safe power for people (France's nuclear power plants) and physicists having it a bit easier to discover the answer to a question that 99.9999999999999% of the world's population could care less about, I'd opt for the former.
I'm pro-science, but I'm for a science that respects people first and foremost. Not one with an exaggerated sense of its own importance (i.e. Carl Sagan) or one that's in league with those intent in carrying out H. G. Wells' nasty agenda of having a select few run the lives of the rest of humanity. And I'm for a science with enough backbone to take up moral causes, such as opposition to legalized abortion.
I just watched the movie "The Core", and if it reflects the current state of science, it seems our understanding of what is inside the Earth is flawed on a more basic level...
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
"The origin of the heat generated inside the Earth is one of the great mysteries of geophysics. Researchers know..."
Researchers don't "know" squat. They have lots of theories, none of which have supporting data. That's what makes the heat of the Earth's core a mystery. By all rights it should not be this hot. It should be dead cold like the moon.
In the 1800s, famed physicist Lord Kelvin (for whom the absolute Kelvin temperature scale is named) was the first to calculate that even if the earth was born in an incandescent molten state (and there is no evidence for this), it would have cooled to its current temperature billions of years sooner than the 4.6 billion years accepted today. Even using generous assumptions about the thermal energy produced by radioactive decay (which also have no direct evidence), the earth would still cool to its current temperature much sooner than 4.6 billion years.
A related mystery is how planets form at all. The conventional theory is that they "clump up" from smaller particles, eventually achieving enough critical mass form an accretion disk that gains heat from compression, gradually acquiring a gravitationally-optimal spheroid shape. But that model has been shown to be inadequate: "Growth beyond meter size via pairwise sticking is problematic, especially in a turbulent disk. Turbulence also prevents the direct formation of planetesimals in a gravitationally unstable dust layer."
So when someone says "scientists know", they are often flat out wrong, as is this story's author.
The three little words so many scientists are deathly afraid to say: "We don't know."
Saying that, I imagine various navies and intelligence agencies will be paying a great deal of attention to this research, if they're not already doing so.
that looks like a map of Civilization!
yeah, you can take that as a slam against Alaska, Arizona, see if I care.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
They keep erupting. They won't do this forever, eventually the core will cool down enough that it will stop.
But not soon enough.
Yellowstone is overdue. Soon, it will blow, and when it does, we will all die. All. Your underground bunker will keep you alive for what...a year? Then you will emerge into the global winter and freeze to death, assuming the air is not still so saturated with ash that you can even breathe.
All human ambition will be covered in ash.
wtf slashdot, you have an agenda?
Why wouldn't friction be the source of heat? The very center of the earth has a balanced gravity pull outwards in every direction, creating a gradient that should condense the heavier atoms around the mantle. The internal core is spinning at a different rate that the crust creating a velocity gradient between the core, crust, and mantle. Regardless if there was no nuclear energy in the core, the friction alone should be substantial. And we know solid particles make up the core. Ancient Earth had some rather nasty experiences with meteors. That solid core settles to the center, but basic common sense would suggest massive meteor strikes would bounce that baby around like a rattle, fracturing the crust and mantle from the inside out not much different than how a baseball to the head can cause the brain to strike the opposite side of the head and create a skull fracture. The core being off center for any length of time has to ratchet up the internal friction.
Pearl Harbor is a base for a classified number of nuclear submarines. I don't think this map reflects that.
No. The map was made using existing data on known nuclear reactors and their power output and extrapolating what their antineutrino signature should look like. However, if geophysicists install detectors that show strong signatures that do not match up with the map given here, then that might be evidence for clandestine nuclear activity.
Yes. I see from the map that it's missing a number of known nuclear stations, for which the IAEA is unable to obtain data, and it's missing a number of "natural reactors" such as Oklu in Gabon, as well as a significant number of former Soviet reactors that are known to still be in use. It's also missing data for several Middle East reactors, known sites in South America, and a number of U.S. Military sites.
Assuming they get their experiment detectors running at all, they should be able to detect unreported nuclear reactor activity, but they'll have a hard time distinguishing it from the non-reactor related events they are seeking with the detectors.
... retards claim these "geophysics" are uneducated sheepeople and all savvy intelligent people obviously support a nuclear reactor on every street corner because it's science-y.
Ummm... hasn't anyone told these scientists that Hawaii is the Pacific headquarters of the US Navy, including such things as nuclear powered aircraft carriers and nuclear powered submarines? I would think this is a horrible place to run an experiment given the fact that you would never know if the results were due to a submarine entering, leaving, or patrolling....
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
Keep out of Venezuela if you want to keep your precious neutrino sensors. They basically confiscated the brazilian gas plant there and the government is turning into a de-facto dictatorship much like the Cuba of old or worse
sign(c14n(envelop(this)), x509)