I didn't say they were "made of", if you remember, you did. I said, that some particles could be oscillating between forms. You said that didn't happen. In the case of neutrons, this is a reversible reaction. You could with great difficulty (low probability) make it run backwards. Whether or not it does this depends upon the net entropy of the reaction.
Even quarks change flavor:
hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu
As for the nitroglycerin analog, you can reassemble all the components into the original molecule, but the laws of thermodynamics say this is not likely to occur spontaneously. You could build a factory that reassembled these CO2, NOx and H20 components back into nitroglycerine molecules.
Subatomic physics has the annoying habit of having higher degrees of freedom and more types of conversions being possible through complicated paths (especially when you consider the complexity of Carbon-catalyzed hydrogen fusion). That in and of itself is pretty amazing.
Neutrinos expected from the sun
It appears established beyond reasonable doubt, through the success of the standard solar model, that the sun shines from nuclear fusion in its core. A fusion reaction involves the merging of two atomic nuclei into one. In the sun, a chain of several different fusion reactions along any of about four different pathways, leads from four hydrogen nuclei (single protons) to one helium nucleus (two protons and two neutrons). In this process, two protons have to be converted into neutrons through beta decays. In each beta decay, a neutrino is emitted (an electron-flavored neutrino, that is). So it is straightforward to calculate that, if the sun shines through hydrogen fusion, it ought to emit two neutrinos per fusion chain. And in our standard theory of particle physics, the neutrinos will zip straight out from the sun, without interacting with the intervening material. The total flux of neutrinos from the sun ought to be some 200 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 per second, corresponding to a flux of about 6.5× 1010 neutrinos per square centimeter per second hitting the earth.
Most of those neutrinos come from the main energy-producing reaction chain in the sun: proton-proton fusion. Unfortunately, the neutrinos from proton-proton (pp) fusion have a very low energy. Energy in this context in measured in electron-volts (1 eV = 1.6× 10-19 Joule), or millions of electron-volts (MeV), and the energy of the pp neutrinos is less than 0.42 MeV, making them difficult to detect.
Smaller (but still enormous) numbers of higher-energy neutrinos are expected from various side reactions, notably boron and beryllium decays. There is also an alternative energy-producing chain, CNO-fusion, where the fusion of hydrogen to helium is catalyzed by carbon. This CNO-chain is expected to be the main energy source in larger, hotter stars, but it should only give a modest contribution in the sun. The CNO neutrinos are otherwise easier to detect than pp-neutrinos, having three to four times more energy each.
The details of the solar fusion reaction web can be found in many works, both on astrophysics and on neutrino physics, such as Karttunen et al (1994) or Bahcall (1989). Less advanced astronomy textbooks, such as Pasachoff (1995) or Zeilik (1994), however, often omit the side reactions, that are highly relevant to solar neutrino studies. A nice diagram of the solar neutrino flux from the standard solar model, as a function of neutrino energy, can be found on John Bahcall's homepage, sns.ias.edu , together with tons of information, data and software pertaining to solar neutrinos. If you are serious about solar neutrinos, his page is a goldmine!
I'm not sure how this relates to my original supposition that they (solar neutrinos) could be oscillating or otherwise spontaneously changing between forms in highly energetic (non-equilibrium) states. |
