The neutron as a particle - my thoughts

It may be difficult to separate "theory" from "application," but let''s see if this helps facilitate the discussion.
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3l
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Re: The neutron as a particle - my thoughts

Post by 3l »

BTW Guys:

NO ONE has built a neutron from scratch.
We get them by busting up stable matter.
The only neutron we have managed to make is the anti- neutron.
At a billion electron volts in the 50s by the cosmotron at Brookhaven National Labs.
Those guys who claim to have made a neutron have simply used a proton beam as a battering ram.
It is called spallation.
It is not really building one but merely driving them out.
Even fusion which appears to make a neutron is just a special case of spallation.....at high temperatures the neutron leaves period.

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JohnCuthbert
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Re: The neutron as a particle - my thoughts

Post by JohnCuthbert »

I'm just a chemist so I may be wrong, but I thought that beta decay was accompanied by the loss of a neutrino.
To "rebuild" a neutron you would need to get the proton and electron back together at the same time as (I guess the right type of) neutrino was passing. Suddenly the odds on the national lottery look good.
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Re: The neutron as a particle - my thoughts

Post by Brett »

I'm pretty sure the neutrino is just ballancing the spins. In fact, isn't that how they deduced the existance of neutrinos, that some nuclear reactions didn't seem to conserve spin? So if you were creating a neutron, you'd just get a neutrino of the oposite spin emitted, and things would still ballance.
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Re: The neutron as a particle - my thoughts

Post by JohnCuthbert »

I had forgotten just how strange nuclear physics is :-)
3l
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Re: The neutron as a particle - my thoughts

Post by 3l »

A regular neutrino can travel through a 1000 light years of lead
without absorbtion.
The chance of slapping a proton and electron with a passing by
neutrino borders of the verge of impossibility.
According to astrophysists the only object to do it is a collapsing white dwarf star. The density is so high (1 cubic centimeter has 200-300 tons in it) the process of e-+p
can proceed until all e-s and p's are used up. At the end of the process the white dwarf turns into a neutron star.
Without the huge mass to stop the neutrinos the process won't go.
The neutrino...rather the antineutrino was proven by putting a detector next to a working fission reactor running at full blast.
The detector efficiency was a statistical nightmare, it only could catch the lowest energy neutrino which put the large tank of
cleaning fluid at roughly a .0012 % efficiency. Neutinos have a energy spectrum of which we humans can only catch the feeblist of them, the rest plow straight thru the planet and are gone. Neutron decay is the primary source of them. A reactor provides 10^13 neutrons / sec per megawatt. That detector holds barely 10^9 neutrinos in a 200 gallon tank. It is more like process chemistry than particle physics.

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Richard Hull
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Re: The neutron as a particle - my thoughts

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Don't get me started on neutrinos.............

Neutrinos like the strong force are best guesses. The super Kamakande, (SP?), in Japan which just lost the bulk of its PMTs in a sympathetic multitube explosion was run for years in search of neutrinos. Out of the data, the scientists picked about 15 stunning events where something happened in on part of the tank and at exactly where predicted, meters away, secondary neutrino reactions seemingly occured. In short, they got what they expected. This is out of about 50,000 detected events per second for years! That's a lotta' events!!

Anyone with a bit of statistics under their belt can see that if you fire 50,000 shotgun pellets at a screen each second and replace that screen with a new one each second, then let computers sift through the screens collected over a long enough period, the probability that any specific dual, two pellet patterning on a single screen will occur is high.

The neutrino was first positied by Pauli in a paper in 1930, I think. He gave it the name of "neutron". The paper caused little stir. Fermi who was musing over beta decay did read the obscure paper, however. In 1932, Chadwick discovered the massive Rutherford neutral and gave it the name neutron. In the mean time, Fermi formed the theory of beta decay and in his epoch 1934 paper on the subject fleshed out Pauli's phantom neutral particle as part of beta decay. As the formal name of neutron was now taken and since the particle Fermi and Pauli hypothesized demanded near zero mass, Fermi called it the "little neutral one" or Italian, "neutrino".

The dream particle remained looked for but unfound for two decades. Fortunately, for its positors, it would be neutral, infintesimally small, travel at virtually light speed, have no basic measurable mass, and if all these "never to find it" characteristics weren't enough, it could have any energy it desired! More correctly...Any energy YOU needed to explain anything YOU couldn't explain in nuclear energy balance relationships.

It was logical, and it just must be so, and...it should not be able to be detected in normal bulk matter. A superb "best guess".

Somehow, or other, a nobel prize was awarded in the mid-fifties for the "discovery of the Neutrino" I am sorry, but I can't remember the winner.

For all this award ceremony, there must have remained a vast and nagging doubt, because countless millions have been spent on several giant underground neutrino catcher's mitts in the 60's, 70's 80's and 90's. Enough data has now been collected to allow physics to lock the neutrino firmly into the fabric of the standard model, but still no tracks exist of a neutrino. There are only about 15 strong incidents of dual, supposedly neutrino related events in hand.

The above being said, the neutrino remains a superb, best guess at the limit of it all. When the neutron decays I think an anti-neutrino is supposedly given off (what ever that means...probably imagined spin related)) A neutrino is NOT repeat NOT needed to assemble a neutron! If it were, the probabilty of neutron formation even on the sun would be virtually zero. Where did the neutrons in the universe come from? With a 10 minute half life, they were not creation event leftovers. The only logical source is fusion of protons and electrons in stellar furnaces where all matter is built. I say again, they are surely the first fusion event in stars. They can only exist there until they are coupled to a proton. Then, barring any super violence, the neutron lifetime goes infinite. It is now the glue of the nucleus. The binding energy for the neutron is "forged" in at the time of its birth. If you believe in neutrinos, then the neutrino portion of the neutron must magically come into existence at the time of fusion. This was unsettling to the standard modelers and so they went quarky on us and laid out a layer two levels below heisenberg. Here, the matter lies.

Our thoughts and concepts about matter below the proton, electron and neutron, are pretty much just dreamed up from best guesses that are carefully woven into a self consistent tapestry, not so much by experiment, as by statistics taken from what most 19th century empiricists would deem failed, or at best, incomplete and inconclusive experiments.

Believe what you will gentlemen. Just remember Bacon's adminition in his essay on "studies". "Read not to accept and take for granted, nor to confute and give argument, nor to make idle discourse, but, instead, to weight and consider.

Richard Hull
Progress may have been a good thing once, but it just went on too long. - Yogi Berra
Fusion is the energy of the future....and it always will be
The more complex the idea put forward by the poor amateur, the more likely it will never see embodiment
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Re: The neutron as a particle - my thoughts

Post by Carl Willis »

The whole issue of spin aside, it is my understanding (I hope I'm not reiterating the obvious or what has already been said) that the neutrino is needed to conserve momentum. Exactly what the properties are of the chargeless and nearly if not massless emission is up for debate. But by experimental measurements made of beta decay processes, linear momentum was not conserved unless another unseen emission was also occurring.
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3l
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Re: The neutron as a particle - my thoughts

Post by 3l »

Look I don't particularly like this bookeeping stuff.
It reaks of I don't know.
But for now until someone actually builds a neutron no one will know for sure.
No one really likes the neutrino particularly but mankind doesn't have a better replacement...yet.
I don't know anything but what I do know is that what's the so called Experts say. I've heard it so many times I want to scream
But until something definite comes along it's magical mystery tour.

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Richard Hull
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Re: The neutron as a particle - my thoughts

Post by Richard Hull »

Correct you both are.

Momentum conservation is important and that is the very impetus for the the dream up of the neutrino. As I said a very good best guess. Something is taking care of the lost momentum based on conservation of energy calcs. Whether it evaporates in some unforeseen manner or a phantom particle carries it off, it is gone. We must scramble for an explanation. The amazing thing is that we know the energy deficit well for any individual decay under observation but the mechanism is left to a best guess which cannot be seen.

Oh, and don't discount spins and magnetic moments. The big boys in Quantum mechanics pay very close attention to these and use them as reasons this or that can be and can't be. These are the same guys that allow the particles in their calcs to be geometrical points with no extension in space inspite of allowing these same points to have mass, charge, spin and magnetic moments. Needless to say this leads to a lot of logical and mathematical infinities, which are for the sake of brevity, ignored.

I am not beefing at the best guess, per se. In the interest of good science, however, I am not accepting the best guess as being something real, I don't care how many books and annointed fathers of the faith tout it as a "given".

I will weigh and consider facts and arguments presented, as always.

Richard Hull
Progress may have been a good thing once, but it just went on too long. - Yogi Berra
Fusion is the energy of the future....and it always will be
The more complex the idea put forward by the poor amateur, the more likely it will never see embodiment
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Re: The neutron in Solar Fusion

Post by guest »

Speaking of Neutrons and Neutron Stars and Neutron creation...

If I'm not mistaken, the Sun is mostly composed of ordinary Hydrogen, or at least it originally did when the solar system was born.

In order for fusion to occur, hydrogen must have at least one neutron bounded to its proton. Where are all these Neutrons coming from? Are they being created in the core?
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Re: The neutron in Solar Fusion

Post by Brett »

Here's an explaination of the prevailing view:

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hb ... us.html#c2

And, yes, these are pretty rare reactions that you couldn't expect to see in a fusor, but the Sun is only generating a tiny power output per cubic meter of insanely hot, dense plasma. It can do that with rare reactions.
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Re: The neutron in Solar Fusion

Post by Richard Hull »

The salient insanity in proton-proton fusion is that
1. A proton and a proton bond together against all electrostatic laws. We dream up a strong force, as yet unobserved, but tacitly assumed.
2. These same protons bond in an environment where even simple, well understood fusion energies are not found.
3. No matter particle consisting of a proton and a proton has ever been observed by man.
4. We are told that in this new neutronless grossly underweight helium atom, one of the protons magically decays into a neutron, making deuterium!!?

A light weight, uncomplicated proton decays into a heavier more complicated neutron??? This is insane! It is like having a VW decay into an SUV!

Man! Occams razor took a big hit on that one.

What can we say..........Believe it or not.

Common sense would say that since a neutron is honsetly observed to decay into a proton and an electron.....it is, therefore, made up of a proton and an electron. Furthermore, a star has only a soup of protons and electrons at the get go. Would not it seem logical that neutrons are created in some fashion from the basic mix as electrons and protons are cooked down to some ultra miniature hydrogen atom state we call a neutron? That this state is highly unstable out of the immediate proximity of other protons and neutrons seems obvious and is observed to be the case in reality. Once created, neutrons could in some as yet understood fashion, fuse or be joined to protons in some electrostatic fashion. No one can tell you how electrostatic forces act at intranuclear ranges for no one has or by the uncertainty principle measured same.

Are we just afraid to say we don't understand yet, and instead, throw logic out the window and dream up subliminal, unseen magic forces and never observed fusions that goes against reason, logic and common sense? I suppose so.

Richard Hull
Progress may have been a good thing once, but it just went on too long. - Yogi Berra
Fusion is the energy of the future....and it always will be
The more complex the idea put forward by the poor amateur, the more likely it will never see embodiment
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Re: The neutron in Solar Fusion

Post by Brett »

I thought we already established that if the interaction between an electron and a neutron were purely electromagnetic, beta decay would have to be endothermic, that is absorb energy. The only way you can explain the known fact that neutrons emit, not absorb, energy when they decay, is to either figure in another force, or claim that the electromagnetic force grossly departs from the force law established at distances greater than the size of a nucleus.

As for why we don't see Helium two in nature, obviously it's radioactive with a VERY short half-life. ;)
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Re: The neutron in Solar Fusion

Post by guest »

>A light weight, uncomplicated proton decays into a heavier more complicated neutron??? This is insane! It is like having a VW decay into an SUV!

I Agree. One possible thought I had (perhaps its a silly idea) is that an electron and a proton are fusing into a neutron that is later captured by hydrogen. This occurs in a neutron star, when gravity forces the electrons to form neutrons (or so goes the theory). Perhaps this is process is occuring on a much less grand scale, but sufficient for fusion in a star.
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Re: The neutron in Solar Fusion

Post by Richard Hull »

I would be much more willing to accept a special case of electrostatics than a totally new unproven mystery force below heisenberg.

How short is the half life on Helium two? I don't see it on me latest published chart of the nuclides! We commonly measure half lives into the 10e-9 second time frame. The trouble is we have to get our hands on He2. Something we have never done. Very convenient.... very convenient.

I never accepted or established that the fusion of the neutron was other than electrostatic or an as yet un-appreciated form of same. I merely noted that the argument that was made regarding exothermic neutron decay was an interesting one that needed to be considered, not that it could birth a new mysterious force.

Fortunately for all of the sides of this issue the answer lies far below the level of probing instrumentatlities. So it is best guess. No matter how well informed the guess or how accredited the guesser, it must forever remain a guess at the present level of probative endeavors.

Richard Hull
Progress may have been a good thing once, but it just went on too long. - Yogi Berra
Fusion is the energy of the future....and it always will be
The more complex the idea put forward by the poor amateur, the more likely it will never see embodiment
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