Word: neutrino
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Driven by a compulsion to make science understandable to the intelligent layman, Asimov has written 96 books and hundreds of magazine articles dealing with nearly every scientific specialty, from The Genetic Code to The Neutrino. Stories such as I, Robot and The Martian Way have placed him in the top rank of U.S. science-fiction writers. And a recent magazine poll showed that a way-out Asimov trilogy written in the 1950s about the universe of the future is still rated first in popularity among science-fiction fans. Asimov has also been published in periodicals ranging from Playboy to Atomic...
...neutrino is the most elusive and mysterious of the some 30 known particles of energy scattered by the splitting of the atom. For more than two decades the neutrino was known only in theory. It has no electric charge or mass of its own. It travels at the speed of light, can penetrate matter equal to 100 million miles of lead without being stopped. Billions of neutrinos bombard each square centimeter of the earth's surface every second; but every one of them eluded scientists until 1956. Then physicists detected the first neutrinos in the debris from man-made...
First thing the neutrinos will measure is the temperature of the core. Astrophysicists now estimate it at 29 million degrees F., but the neutrino observatory will give a firmer figure because the nuclear reaction that produces solar neutrinos is favored by high temperature. If Dr. Davis counts more neutrinos than current formulas predict, astrophysicists will know that the temperature of the core is higher than they have guessed...
...this snug foxhole, Reines will assemble a vast neutrino trap, designed at Cleveland's Case Institute. Even the most powerful cosmic rays do not penetrate to the depth of the gold mine, but the entire universe is believed to be swarming with neutrinos that will be deterred not at all by two miles of rock. Some of them are believed to carry unusual amounts of energy, and these fat neutrinos should be easier to detect than leaner ones...
Ashes of Creation. Part of the Reines apparatus will lie in wait for fat neutrinos. Another part will have several hundred square yards of scintillation counters to watch for mu-mesons generated by neutrinos that hit particles in the rock surrounding the mine. On the earth's surface these neutrino-induced mu-mesons are almost impossible to identify because of confusion caused by cosmic rays...