Cosmology View

My views on Cosmology and Physics

site navigation menu
 

Posts

Doubting Neutrinos

The neutrino should be a particle worthy of doubt.

The definition of a Neutrino has changed over the years.
Initially, it had no mass and no charge.

Now, a neutrino has 3 flavors with each having a tiny mass which differs among the 3.

The claim remains they can pass through matter with no effect, because their mass is so trivial.

However, several experiments were designed to detect these particles indirectly.

The trick for a detection of something undetectable like a neutrino is finding an event which can be attributed to only a neutrino.

I had the same task when doubting the claims of LIGO detecting non-existent gravitational waves.

I found the terrestrial source of LIGO's claimed distant impossible events.

The difficulty in validating one's doubt of this attribution to an undetectable entity is identifying what is really causing the event being observed.

I investigated the entire situation of neutrinos.

The different types of neutrinos are described, including their origin. The complex experiments designed to detect them and their results are also described

My conclusion is the claimed indirect detections are not convincing. Each event for a claimed detection is like a step of radioactive decay.
.

All detectors are placed deep underground.

The correct verification of indirect detections would include another context, whether on Earth's surface or from Earth's orbit.

None of the experiments were performed in a different context, to rule out the possibility of events coming from the context of great depth.

I take strong exception to the  Cowan–Reines neutrino experiment which was claimed to confirm the existence of a neutrino.

This experiment had much heavy water in a container deep underground.

Normal water is H2O or 2 hydrogen atoms with 1 oxygen atoms.

Hydrogen has a nucleus of 1 proton, while oxygen has a nucleus of 16 protons and 8 electrons, so its atomic number is 8, with 8 neutrons. Oxygen has Z=8 and N=8.
A neutron in a nucleus is 1 proton + 1 electron.

Heavy water has 1 or both of the hydrogen atoms replaced by deuterium atoms. Deuterium has a nucleus of 2 protons and 1 electron, so its atomic number is 1, with 1 neutron. Deuterium has Z=1 and N=1.

Chemists have noted that elements having both Z and N odd tend to be unstable. Deuterium is one notable exception, because both Z and N are odd  (1).

Oxygen is stable, and both of its Z and N are even (8).

If deuterium, with its odd/odd nucleus would perform a never observed radioactive decay, it would eject the neutron from the proton. The proton remains because the atom has an electron in orbit around the positive nucleus. The neutron has no effect on the orbiting electron.

This experiment detected neutrons had been ejected from the deuterium in the heavy water.

The claim is that only a neutrino can explain the dissociation.

The claim is that a hidden neutrino affected only the tiny nucleus in deuterium (2 nucleons) and had no effect on the much larger oxygen nucleus (16 nucleons).

Earth certainly has much water, but in normal water there are only 156 deuterium atoms per million hydrogen atoms.

The only measurement of this neutron dissociation in deuterium atoms is with much heavy water deep underground, where the % of deuterium was greatly increased.

Eath's core is hot from radioactivity at depths. This is known from many studies.

Physicsworld had a story in 2011, Radioactive decay accounts for half of Earth's heat.

Heavy water either above ground or in Earth's orbit  should exhibit the same behavior if hidden neutrinos are the only cause of the experimental results. No other context was ever tested.

The other experiments have similar results.

The HOMESTAKE experiment used a specific liquid compound, not water.

This was named for the gold mine where a container having 100,000 gallons of tetrachloroethylene was monitored for a specific event, to be attributed to a neutrino.

The experiment detected a beta plus decay event of the chlorine atoms in a huge liquid container placed deep underground.

Again, only a hidden neutrino is claimed to cause this unexpected beta plus step of a radioactive decay.

This experiment was never conducted in any other context than at great depth.

It is impossible for me to conduct these complex, expensive experiments in another context, like on the surface and far from Earth's core, or in Earth's orbit.

I cannot test my hypothesis that there is no hidden neutrino particle.

Perhaps, you are interested in the details justifying my doubt of the existence of an undetectable neutrino.

Links to all references are integrated, so any excerpt can be confirmed, whenever needed, in the on-line source.

Here is my book done in a series of web pages:

Detecting Neutrinos

https://www.cosmologyview.com/Books/DN/dn.html


date posted  04/04/2022