Ghostly antineutrinos can help in detecting and stopping Nuclear tests.
In this modern era of Science, nuclear bombs are considered as one of the dangerous weapons known to us, which have the power to destroy whole Earth and its life. Keeping that on mind, a large number of countries prohibited the further making of nuclear bombs by accepting the treaty called as Nuclear Weapons Prohibited Treaty. But there are some countries who are increasing their nuclear power day by day and thus don't following the treaty.
But Scientists have discovered the way by which, with the help of antineutrinos , they can detect which country is testing nuclear bombs and thereby stopping it. It will indeed prove a big blow for such countries.
What are antineutrinos??
Antineutrino is an anti particle of neutrino which have infinitesimal mass, no electric charge and have half spin i.e. 1/2.Antineutrinos were discovered by Wolfgang Pauli, as an constituent of Beta-decay. They are produced from beta- decay(let beta-decay of C-14 ) as follows:-
The main source of antineutrinos is nuclear reactor, as they are produced mainly from negative beta-decay.
How antineutrinos could detect nuclear blasts??
Before understanding that how we can detect an atomic bomb using antineutrinos,we have to know first that how we can detect an antineutrino??
Antineutrinos are detected by using an antineutrino detector. It is a type of device filled with protons containing liquid.When an antineutrino(.gif)
)(mainly electron-antineutrino), combines with liquid(mainly water) containing proton(p), it produces positron(.gif)
) and a neutron (n) as follows:-
The positrons and neutrons are produced with a light flash in detector, which is called as Signature of antineutron.The antineutrons was first discovered by Frederick Reines and Clyde Cowan in 1995.
Now come up to the main topic i.e. how antineutrinos can detect nuclear bombs. As discussed above, every nuclear reaction is source of antineutrinos, so when an atomic bomb will blast,it will also produce antineutrons along with some other paricles. Then these antineutrons will cover long distances through the Earth. Now we have to put a antineutrino detector at suitable distance from the atomic blast. Then this antineutrino detector will detect antineutrino
particle by scintillation produced due to the reaction between antineutrino particle from atomic blast and proton (in liquid )from detector resulting in formation of positron and neutron as discussed above.As we can't stop formation or movement of antineutrino, it is also impossible for anyone to hide the nuclear tests.
The detector will not only detect nuclear test, but moreover it will also search for the place where test was carried out by observing seismic activity with sensors connected to it.So by this way we can detect and hence prevent nuclear tests in further future.
The problem that scientists are facing up is that it will cost so much to build such a big detector, who can detect antineutrino from a large distances (about several hundred kilometers) and also will not easy to construct.
The one of the biggest antineutrino detector called as Super-Kamiokande detector, located in a mine in Hida, Japan, to keep an eye on North Korea .It is consists of about 50000 tons of water and various sensors to observe the scintillation produced when antineutrino reacts with water. A picture of Super-Kamiokande detector is as shown below:-
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