The idea is kind of cool, but doesn't sound very practical. The beam width is my concern. If it's really narrow, then we have to know exactly where every nuclear warhead is to hit it. If it's really wide, then the power draw will be that much more immense, plus a huge risk of collateral damage to any life, human or otherwise, that happens to get in the path of the beam.<p>Not to mention that the prospect of detonating every nuke in the world, even at only 3% or so of normal yield, sounds pretty destructive too. If we're gonna get rid of some nukes, how about Megatons to Megawatts instead? <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megatons_to_Megawatts_Program" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megatons_to_Megawatts_Program</a>
In many ways, I'm glad this is so impractical. If it weren't, the prime candidate for actually doing this is one of the nuclear powers. They'd just "forget" to target their own nukes.
Not sure triggering every nuclear bomb on the planet is a great outcome. I suppose if nations knew this was coming, they'd either dismantle their weapons or try to destroy the 1000km accelerator.
Not sure this would work for the nukes that are constantly moving around on submarines. Would have to know the exact position of the sub to aim the beam.
It's not clear why they are aiming at exploding the nuclear bombs instead of simply degrading them. If you induce enough plutonium nuclei to split, the core won't reach criticality when the implosion happens, so no mushroom cloud.<p>To do that, you can point a lower intensity neutrino beam for years at a nuke or a group of nukes. The adversary won't even know the nukes are compromised.
The title alone should give you pause; neutrinos are no easy thing to wrangle. We build giant swimming pools of water underground in the dark to try to catch them.<p><a href="https://what-if.xkcd.com/73/" rel="nofollow">https://what-if.xkcd.com/73/</a><p>"We emphasize that the whole technology is futuristic and thereason should be clear toall the accelerator experts. Actually, even the simplest prototype of our proposal, i.e. theneutrino factory of GeV range needs substantial R & D work. Wealso note that a 1000 TeVmachine requires the accelerator circumference of the order of 1000 km with the magnetsof≃10 Tesla which is totally ridiculous. Only if we can invent a magnet which can reachalmost one order of magnitude higher field than the currentlyavailable magnet, the proposalcan approach the reality. Even if it becomes the reality, thecost of the construction is ofthe order of or more than 100 billion US$. Also we note that thepower required for theoperation of the machine may exceed 50 GW taking the efficiencyinto account. This is abovethe total power of Great Britain. This implies that no singlecountry will be able to affordthe construction of this machine and also the operation timemust be strictly restricted. Webelieve the only way this machine may be built is when all the countries on earth agree todo it by creating an organization which may be called the “World Government” for whichthis device becomes the means of enforcement."
This would explain two recent secretive projects.<p>First is the various attempts by China to build underground "neutrino detectors" in various parts of the country. Before all of the Chinese Academy of Science websites were taken down, you could see pictures of it. They were tunneling quite deep. 100 miles at around average depth of 4,000 feet.<p>Of course no one does nuclear like the Americans. The Department of Energy's secretive DUNE project...Deep Underground Nuetrino [E] is well under way across Illinois and will eventually extend the accelerator at Fermilab to over 800 miles underground.<p>This technology is, to use an overused term, the Manhattan Project of the 21st century.
In terms of engineering, I can't see how steering this beam would be remotely viable: it appears you've got to line up the long axes of the 1000 km circumference muon ring to point exactly in the direction of the weapon to be targeted. So to have it steerable at all it appears necessary to make it space-based. Having done that, it seems the energy, reaction mass and and time required to steer the thing would be pretty crazy.<p>From a basic physics viewpoint this seems surprisingly within grasp though in terms of energy scales. Greatly entertaining!
From the introduction of the Paper:<p>"We emphasize that the whole technology is futuristic and the reason should be clear to all the accelerator experts... We also note that a 1000 TeV machine requires the accelerator circumference of the order of 1000 km with the magnets of ≃ 10 Tesla which is totally ridiculous... Even if it becomes the reality, the cost of the construction is of the order of or more than 100 billion US$... the power required for the
operation of the machine may exceed 50 GW"
The concept reminds me a lot of device described in <a href="https://www.amazon.com/The-Genesis-Machine-James-P-Hogan-audiobook/dp/B00BJ3P91C" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/The-Genesis-Machine-James-P-Hogan-aud...</a> I wonder if the authors have read it ...
Not to be a snob but I have a problem with the quality of this paper. Take the following passage:<p>"Actually, even the simplest prototype of our proposal, i.e. the neutrino factory of GeV range needs substantial R & D work. We also note that a 1000 TeV machine requires the accelerator circumference of the order of 1000 km with the magnets of ≃ 10 Tesla which is totally ridiculous."<p>Assigning such value-laden language as 'totally ridiculous' could be explained away as simply an artefact of translation, but it continues...<p>"Even if it becomes the reality, the cost of the construction is of the order of or more than 100 billion US$."<p>According to whom?<p>"Also we note that the power required for the operation of the machine may exceed 50 GW"<p>Again - reference?<p>"... taking the efficiency into account. This is above the total power of Great Britain. This implies that no single country will be able to afford the construction of this machine..."<p>Does it? How does GB power production imply that one of the superpowers could not build such a device? Might as well say that the power required is 100x the power output of the DRC, or that it is equivalent to the acoustic energy of 40 million duck quacks, or 1/5 the energy emitted by the Sun in 200 milliseconds. These comparisons add nothing to the paper.<p>"... and also the operation time must be strictly restricted. We believe the only way this machine may be built is when all the countries on earth agree to do it by creating an organization which may be called the “World Government” for which this device becomes the means of enforcement."<p>World government??? Since when was this a political paper? We already have many multinational organisations - NATO, WHO, some for atomic energy.<p>I've no doubt the paper was written in good faith but this really, really needed an editor and some peer review. Something that arxiv.org, as much as I support its core aims, sorely lacks.
It feels like it would be much easier to modify the nuclear weapons to be immune to this device than to actually build it.<p>OTOH it may be easier to build than authors assume: what if it is build in orbit so it doesn't have shoot the beam across the Earth? I know we don't do accelerators in space, but it may be easier than reaching 1000 TeV.
Sorry, this wouldn't work at all. I don't have time and desire to verify their neutrino beam / neutron shower calculation, but they want to detonate bombs by raising the core temperature to 300C, assumed ignition temperature of surrounding explosives.<p>This doesn't work, because: 1) you cannot detonate explosives there by simple ignition, 2) you need a very precise timing for simultaneous activation of all detonators, to achieve the smooth shockwave front, and 3) even if all this somehow happened, you just can't explode the bomb just lying around AT ALL, as it is not in pre-critical configuration yet. There are many things that need to happen simultaneously, in exact order and with nanosecond precision. There are PAL devices that provide encrypted timing differences to the detonation controller by loading external codes — without these codes, it is physically impossible to achieve nuclear explosion, even if you somehow activated all other things from pre-detonation checklist. Etc etc.<p>Not to mention that in the real bomb, there is much less plutonium than 10 kg they have mentioned.<p>I assume the rest of the paper is of similar quality.
Star Trek needs this.<p>"Mr Saru, destroy all the Klingon relay stations on the surface."<p>"But Captain, some of them are on the other side of the planet."<p>"Use the neutrino beam."<p>"Aye Captain."
2020:
1. Covid
2. Polic Brutality
3. Cicadas
4. Global Thermal Nuclear war<p>Yep....<p>Hey, it's only a "3% fizzle reaction". How bad can that be?