Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics
Scientific paper
May 2006
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2006agusm.u41f..01l&link_type=abstract
American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2007, abstract #U41F-01
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
7207 Core (1212, 1213, 8124), 0932 Radioactivity Methods, 1025 Composition Of The Mantle, 1040 Radiogenic Isotope Geochemistry, 1507 Core Processes (1213, 8115)
Scientific paper
Neutrinos carry away energy and information from the earth's crust and from deep within the earth, from wherever there are radioactive materials. The most important sources of electron anti-neutrinos in the earth are from Uranium, Thorium and Potassium decays. These also constitute the most important sources of radiogenic heating, and hence possibly the origin of continental drift and the geomagnetic field. There has been much debate over the years about the location and total mass of these elements, as well as the heat budget of the earth. Neutrino physics has now developed to the stage where measurements of the total earth radioactivity are possible, and (several year) plans are in motion to make few percent measurements of the radioactivity, and hence U/Th content of the mantle and core. Into the bargain a will be a definitive search for a natural nuclear reactor deep within the earth. The inverse beta process, which produces two characteristic light flashes in liquid scintillation detectors, has been employed in ever-larger instruments over the last 50 years to uniquely identify electron anti-neutrinos from nuclear reactors, and successfully search for neutrino oscillations. The 1000 ton KamLAND experiment in Japan has done so in detecting reactors from hundreds of km around Japan. KamLAND also reported the first measurements of U/Th neutrinos from the earth, albeit mostly from local crust. New experiments are being proposed to make further geonu measurements around the world, and particularly over the thin oceanic crust to measure the mantle and core radioactivity. Further in the future such detectors may do earth tomography, monitor for nuclear weapons and carry out exciting astrophysics observations.
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