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I'm having my students research new energy technologies. One of them came across this website:

-Neutrino energy: harnessing the power of cosmic radiation

The website promotes a deeply unlikely energy technology: They say they can get a significant amount of energy from neutrinos. They also say it's enough energy that you could replace solar panels with a neutrino panel.

This, on its face, seems to be really sketchy. I remember reading that a typical neutrino can pass through a light-year of lead without interacting.

This energy technology idea being promoted by a man named Holger Thorsten Schubart.

I really don't think this could be legit, but I'd like some sources I could point my student to so that he can verify the technology himself, and not just based on my expertise.

Can anyone provide a good source to debunk or (in the unlikely chance this technology is legit) confirm these claims?

David Elm
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I would agree that on its face this seems sketchy, but there's a fairly simple way of debunking this. (Strictly back-of-the-envelope calculations.)

  1. The neutrino flux experienced on any given part of Earth's surface is approximately 3 * 10^15 per square meter per second, or 10^19 per hour. The average solar neutrino carries an energy of ~400 keV.
  2. 1 kwH = 2.2 * 10^22 keV. So if you could capture all of the energy from the neutrinos passing through a given square metre, you'd have 4 * 10^21 kEv... or about 0.2 kWh.
  3. The average insolation of a square metre on a sunny day is 1.368 kW. A solar panel, therefore, need only be 15% efficient to outperform a magical material that can stop 100% of all neutrinos dead in their tracks.
  4. In the matter that makes up a human body, the odds of a given neutrino interacting at all with that matter is 1 in 10^24.

So unless these neutrino panels are some truly special kind of matter, they're not going to be replacing solar panels anytime soon.

jdunlop
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