Neutrinos

Recently I watched a PBS program on neutrinos. This was a fascinating saga of the search for the Fermi-posited neutrino by first locating huge vats of carbon tetrachloride deep inside mountains to count the number of neutrinos coming from the decay of electrons deep inside the sun. As these measurement technologies became more and more sophisticated (which I will not relate here) it became clear that, not only were there neutrinos, but they were indeed as numerous as predicted -- billions fly through every one square inch of our bodies every second. But since they carry no electric charge, they pass through the most solid of solids with little or no interaction -- thus their measurement difficulties. (Also, enormous one-way transfers of charged matter into inert subatomic particles would suggest that entropy is much more onerous than I have until now believed.)

One website (grandunification.com) suggests that the recombination of a photon and a high-energy neutrino can produce an electron. This theory fascinates me since it would provide a way for electrons to travel from the sun to the Earth by first splitting apart and later recombining. (Very few electrons travel through the vacuum of space and into the Earth’s atmosphere.) Why is this important? May I suggest two reasons:

1) If photovoltaic (solar cell) production of electricity (continuous electron streams) is, in fact, caused by (at least in small part) the combination of photons and neutrinos to produce electrons then this might lead to much more efficient solar energy capture research. (It has never made any intuitive sense to me that silicon or gallium arsenide wafers could, by themselves, forever produce electrons from only interactions with photons without some sort of external replenishment. This would require some everlasting source of electrons in the solar cell since there clearly can be electron sinks in the circuit … such as a charging battery.) It is also curious to note that gallium is used in newer neutrino measuring devices.

2) If photosynthesis is also triggered by such electron recreation from sunlight, then this would be part of the hydrocarbon manufacturing process. (If photosynthesis causes electrons to be produced from photons and neutrinos, then these electrons could be the first step in the electrolysis of water and/or carbon dioxide into their components … which then could chemically combine into various hydrocarbons.) If we were to fully understand this process, we might be able to replicate it more efficiently (from the quintillions of neutrinos and photons coming from the sun) to reduce one posited cause of atmospheric warming (carbon dioxide excess) and, at the same time, produce enormous hydrocarbon energy reservoirs.

And, if the above two hypotheses are true, then it would seem that the counting of neutrinos coming from the sun might have been or can be done a lot more simply.

Afterthought: If electrons can split into neutrinos and photons and then recombine (even in extremely small numbers) then isn’t it possible that this process could be the justification for “tunneling electrons”? Clearly, neutrinos can tunnel through resistors … and certain photons also (egs., x-ray, infrared, or gamma ray photons.)