The
KamLAND Test
Letters
to neutrino observatories
Eugene Sittampalam
The letters reproduced below are
self-explanatory.
Readers here are most welcome to copy this
page to anyone in neutrino and other elementary particle research.
A related letter, reproduced in LIGO, was subsequently sent to scientists and engineers at the
Laser
Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO).
Subject: KamLAND and the Unification of Physics
Date: 20 February 2003
Professor Giorgio Gratta
Dear Professor Gratta,
Your co-authored paper of 9 December 2002 to Physical Review Letters was indeed very reassuring. This letter is to request of you and your privileged KamLAND team to kindly consider a follow-up experiment.
A flux of electron-antineutrinos, too, should be detectable from the solar corona. The flux should also be strong enough to reveal nuclear fission as the primary energy producing reaction in the Sun (fusion being only the consequential secondary, as in the H-bomb). The finding would resolve persisting problems not only in neutrino and solar physics but also across the entire realm of physics!
The more detectable solar wind itself is still not well understood. This wind is known to consist mainly of protons and electrons, but the origin of which supersonic mass particles remains a mystery even to this day. Therefore, as you may agree, it would seem only logical and justifiable to check out for a possible third major constituent here – the electron-antineutrino. The three are the products of neutron decay, which process in the solar corona would also eliminate, by extension, the cosmic problems of dark matter and black holes! See The Galaxy.
In this final perspective on the nature of things, the neutrino is not much different from the gamma-ray photon. Both quanta originate from the nuclear surface region; both move at speed c (only); both are subject to scattering (not “oscillation”); and both can thus spawn other quanta. Their only difference is in the mode of propagation: essentially, the photon is one-dimensional and the neutrino two-dimensional. For complete details, please do click on The Neutrino and the other linked pages therein.
Your able lobby to investigate this solar antineutrino stream in one of the next KamLAND projects could prove pivotal to fundamental physics. If the material on my website is convincing overall, do make an exception if you must to favorably consider this unique and humble request from an “outsider.”
Thank you and best wishes to all on your cutting-edge endeavors toward the advancement of science.
Sincerely,
Eugene Sittampalam
Subject: Re: KamLAND and the Unification of Physics
Date: 22 February 2003
Professor Giorgio Gratta
Dear Professor Gratta,
Thank you very much for your prompt response indicating also a possible interest in my prediction.
Concerning your query about the quantitative flux strength that one could expect in experiments, I can provide the following for your kind consideration.
In principle, the total electron-antineutrino production in the Sun should be equal in number to the total electron production therein. In the solar wind we intercept, therefore, the antineutrino flux should bear a linear relationship to the electron flux. That is, averaged over the solar rotational cycle of about 28.4 days, stronger the solar wind – stronger will be the antineutrino flux.
For the electron-neutrino, on the other hand, such a dependence is already an empirical fact (which also buttresses my model); please see: R. L. McNutt Jr., Correlated Variations in the Solar Neutrino Flux and the Solar Wind and the Relation to the Solar Neutrino Problem, Science 270, 1635-1639 (8 December 1995); and the more recent: Solar Neutrino Flux: Evidence for Intrinsic Variability; and www.stanford.edu/group/Sturrock/papers/Sturrock02b/Sturrock02b.html.
Going by such reports also on the antineutrino the past few years (none solar, so far), I would put the detectable solar-antineutrino flux at 60% of the solar-electron flux; the rest being lost to scattering en route. (This is also considering the fact that, unlike the ‘uncharged’ neutrinos, electrons tend to get deflected by the geomagnetic field, which makes altitude a factor for electrons.)
Please do write for anything further. I shall also consider it a great honor if invited to attend any KamLAND project meetings and to coordinate with NASA or MIT for the solar plasma data.
Thank you once again for responding.
With best regards,
Yours sincerely,
Eugene Sittampalam
And some earlier letters…
Subject: SNO and the Unification of Physics
Date: 8 December 2001
Professor Art McDonald
Director
The Sudbury Neutrino Observatory Institute
Department of Physics
Queen's University at
Dear Professor McDonald,
The 30-year old Solar Neutrino Problem is no more. The solution lies with the ultimate model of the Sun. The neutrino does indeed change – but only in intensity, as the inverse square of travel distance. And it propagates only at the speed of light through space.
In all sincerity, these are not vain words. They are statements now theoretically well founded and empirically well substantiated.
…
Finally, in your next phase of experiments, please do check out for THE GREATER ELECTRON-ANTINEUTRINO FLUX from the solar corona, as predicted in my work. (Nuclear fusion is the primary reaction not in stars or galaxies but in mass centers of a much higher order in the cosmos. Fission predominates as the primary energy-producing reaction everywhere else down the line. The solar antineutrino originates predominantly in the final-stage neutron decay which peaks at, and effects, the corona. The other products of this decay are the proton and the electron, the ones we already detect today as main constituents of the solar wind. Further, the electron-neutrino flux, the shortfall of which is defying current theory, is from the secondary fusion process that occurs under the backpressure of fission, reminiscent of the hydrogen bomb.)
Thank you.
Awaiting your early and favourable reply,
I remain,
Yours sincerely,
Eugene Sittampalam
An unfortunate news item here before the next letter...
The New York Times
November 13, 2001
Accident Curbs
By Howard W. French with
Dennis Overbye
TOKYO, Nov. 12 — A huge underground chamber that made historic observations of ghostly particles called neutrinos that stream through the cosmos was crippled over the weekend when thousands of light detectors imploded in a chain reaction.
The accident at Kamioka Neutrino Observatory, a large particle physics
laboratory outside of
"People at the site heard a sound," said Hirotaka Sugawara, director of KEK accelerator laboratory. "It happened inside the water and surely must have had something to do with the pressure, but I will not comment further."
He said the accident happened as the water tanks were being refilled after having been drained for maintenance. He called the accident "a huge tragedy" and said it would take at least a year to repair the damage.
In confirming the
accident, officials at
But in 1998, experiments at Super- K established that at least one of the three types, or "flavors," in which neutrinos come must have at least some mass. This was big news for the universe because according to the standard calculations that describe the big bang that started the universe, neutrinos are the most populous elementary particles in the universe and their cumulative mass could have an effect on cosmic geography and the formation of galaxies.
The Super-Kamiokande detector consists of 12.5 million gallons of
water in a tank about the size of a cathedral a mile underground in the Kamioka zinc mine 180 miles northwest of
The tank is lined with 11,242 photomultiplier tubes spaced about a yard apart, which detect a bluish streak of light left in the water when a high- speed particle passes through. A researcher familiar with the experiment said compared the accident to corn popping or a string of firecrackers going off. About 7,000 of the detector's 11,000 tubes imploded, he said, each of which costs about $3,000. He estimated the total loss at $20 to $30 million. "Thank goodness we got our Nobel already cooking," he said.
Subject: Fwd: SNO and the Unification of Physics
Date: 15 December
2001
Professor
Yoji Totsuka
Director
Kamioka Observatory
ICRR,
Kamioka
Dear Professor
Totsuka,
THE ELECTRON ANTINEUTRINO
I was indeed saddened
to read about the recent mishap at your observatory. It was heartening, though,
to learn of your resolve to rebuild the detector without question. (The highly
purified bulk and symmetry of the system, unlike its amorphous surroundings,
may have brought natural frequencies into a very narrow range. Ensuring in the
future that the photomultiplier tubes are neither evenly spaced nor share a
common vibrational frequency might help!)
This letter is to
kindly request of you and your committee to consider an added feature for the
detector you will be rebuilding. If I understand correctly from journal reports
and other literature, present neutrino observatories around the world do not
have the capability or the provision to detect the electron-ANTINEUTRINO.
Hopefully, the letter and attachment I am forwarding to you here will inspire
you to consider seriously this aspect as well. In fact, it should prove to be
of prime importance to all neutrino observatories!
Contrary to popular
belief, the neutrino does affect, though ever so subtly, every single atom in
its path. The energy packet that is the neutrino recoils from around the
equator of its nuclear particle of origin. The energy thus diminishes in
intensity as it propagates radially out. And it is
this unique feature that makes its detection a challenge among all elementary
particles. However, an intense stream of neutrinos can cause many detectable
effects. The upwelling of the water table preceding a major earthquake is a
good example. Another, also a precursor to major earthquakes, is the
aboveground light flashes caused by interference of the neutrino wavefronts through matter. These are perhaps the best-known
harbingers in quake-prone
Neutrinos thus
dissipate their energy and momentum increasingly with distance – but moving
always at the speed of light. The “disappearance” you report of them between
two detection points is a consequence of this simple fact of effective
depletion with travel distance. The explanation that the types of neutrinos we
can detect are “oscillating” into “flavors” we cannot detect, too, is correct
in this perspective. For example, if muon-neutrinos
oscillate into tau-neutrinos on their way to Kamioka from KEK, it only means that the latter neutrinos
are being produced en route (or mimicked) by the sheer intensity of the former,
that is, by wave interference. (High-intensity wave interference can
effectively cause frequency doubling and the related higher-energy phenomena,
as in nonlinear optics. Successive doubling becomes also a possibility down the
line through matter when intensities are exceptionally high.)
Please do see the
forwarded material for more on these renewed insights. ...
Thank
you and the very best to you and your teams in all your endeavors.
Sincerely,
Eugene Sittampalam
Subject: THE ELECTRON-ANTINEUTRINO
Date: 16 December 2001
Dr
Art McDonald
Professor of Physics
Director, SNO
Institute
Queen's University
Kingston, Ontario
K7L3N6
Dear Professor
McDonald,
Thank you for your
prompt response of the 8th inst. Though negative, it wasn’t something
unexpected. I am pursuing the matter with the peer review world, which, as you
may know only too well, is a very slow process. In the interim, however, it
shouldn’t hurt to have in mind the model of the neutrino I have propounded. It
has the immense potential to be the right one since it resonates with the rest
of fundamental physics!
As you may also agree,
it’s best not to be blinkered or to leave any stones unturned in our search to
understand the neutrino fully. The electron-antineutrino is there in great
abundance – above ground and below – just waiting to reveal itself and the
simple secrets of the universe to us. Please do give it some serious
consideration.
Thank you once again
and best wishes to you and your Institute in your continued quest for answers.
Sincerely,
Eugene Sittampalam
– End of Letters –
The best places for updates on neutrino astronomy are the monthly Physics Today; and for more details, the biannual International Neutrino Conference Proceedings (NU2000 in Sudbury Canada) and the Neutrino Telescope Meetings.
Web pages for the major neutrino telescope projects are: AMANDA, ANTARES, Baikal, NESTOR, and Super-Kamokande publications.