Serious-ish Question...

Kavalree

Kavalree

Kavalree

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Yes, It's another Jaffa_Far thread, your favourite.

So, I watched 2012 the other night, and it makes NO SENSE at all. I did science at college but failed. I have an understanding of physics and chemistry, but not biology.

So, in the film, as you may know, its about the end of the world in 2012. There is NO explanation at all in the film as to why it is the end, except 2 lines right near the very beginning. An Indian scientist says, and I quote, "It looks like the neutrinos coming from the sun have mutated into a new kind of nuclear particle. They're heating up the earth's core and suddenly act like microwaves." Now, even with my very basic knowledge of science, and physics as a whole, this is impossible. As to the best of my knowledge, a particle itself cannot mutate into a nuclear particle, as it is not a living thing.

Now, what I would like to know is, am I right in this thought or is it entirely possible for a neutrino to mutate and turn nuclear?
 
Ah that 2012 documentary, I recall it well.

Yes, it is entirely possible, in the same way that kryptonite really can suppress Superman's powers and Powerbooks are compatible with alien technology
 
Jaffa_Far said:
Now, what I would like to know is, am I right in this thought or is it entirely possible for a neutrino to mutate and turn nuclear?
Click to expand...
This is why they banned the sale of neutrinos, terrorists were buying them and making bombs out of them :eek: :mad:

Think about it, when was the last time you saw neutrinos still for sale in the shops...?

Exactly :o
 
Jaffa_Far said:
Now, what I would like to know is, am I right in this thought or is it entirely possible for a neutrino to mutate and turn nuclear?
Click to expand...

It's a film. It's fictional. You don't have to worry about it. The term you want is suspension of disbelief ... i.e. films talk rubbish to make their plots work, all you need to do is hold on and enjoy the ride ...
 
Especially 2012, which is not remotely geologically accurate...

Outrunning supervolcanoes, tectonic plates re working themselves in solid blocks and basically everything else...!
 
RomanNose said:
I don't think particles can just "mutate".
Click to expand...
Actually neutrinos can!

Most people are familiar with the concept of things like electrons emitting photons, that's how lights work. That involves 1 particle making another but that particle remaining or perhaps decaying into a set of different particles such as in beta decay. However, it's possible for one particle simply to convert into another.

This was first seen when neutrino telescopes detected something like only 30% of the number of neutrinos coming from the Sun models predicted. It turned out that the telescope could only see one type of neutrino (there's an electron-neutrino, muon-neutrino and tau-neutrino as well as their antiparticles) and the electron-neutrinos produced in the Sun were changing flavour (electrons, muons and taus are all different flavours of the same particle type, a lepton) and so some of them weren't being seen.

It's this which lead to the realisation neutrinos must have mass, though it's millions of times smaller than even electrons. It's known as 'neutrino oscillation' and it's becoming an important tool in understanding the Standard Model and the internal workings of the Sun because neutrinos aren't slowed down or really affected by the Sun. When a neutrino is made in the core of the Sun by proton fusion it blasts straight out of the Sun without a problem. Compare that to a photon, which takes an average of 9 billions years to bounce around until it works it's way to the surface. Fortunately VAST numbers of them are made else the Sun would be pretty dark!

As for the original post, if neutrinos did magically turn into a particle which interacted significantly with normal matter, particularly water and rock, it wouldn't just heat the centre of the Earth, it'd like subjected to a microwave. The oceans would boil, people would drop dead etc.

In principle there's various transmuting channels for the neutrino which could allow them to produce other particles, which do interact with normal matter significantly, but obviously it's very very very rare because otherwise we'd already know about it.

To give an idea of how poorly neutrinos interact with normal matter, if you sent a beam of neutrinos into a piece of solid lead a thickness of 50,000 LIGHT YEARS half of them could come out the other end. Compare that with the few feet of concrete we use for nuclear reactors!

However, this isn't the say that neutrinos don't have some important effects. When a sufficiently massive star burns up all it's fuel and collapses into a neutron star the resultant energy flux causes a final wave of fusion to pass through the star's core. This produces staggering amounts of neutrinos and even though they hardly interact at all so many are produced that enough of them do hit the normal material of the star that they cause it to explode with the power of a supernova. Supernova are some of the most powerful events in the universe and it's believed that we only see 10% of the resultant energy, the rest of dumped into neutrinos. A supernova puts as much as 9 times the energy into neutrinos as it does into light and heat!
 
Can neutrinos mutate? Yes en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutrino_oscillation
Do neutrinos emit heat on interaction with matter? Yes
Do many neutrinos reach earth? Yes: About 65 billion solar neutrinos per second pass through every square centimeter perpendicular to the direction of the Sun in the region of the Earth. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutrino
Should you be worried? Don't be daft
 

12:05 onwards he's talking about 2012... and into the next part.

It's also a superb stand-up routine if you've got the time to watch it from the start. :)
 
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