Neutrino Energy?

[Gary Harnagel]

Has anyone seen this:

"Neutrino Power Cubes can transform portions of energy into power"

https://neutrinovoltaic.com/en/

https://patents.google.com/patent/WO2016142056A1/en

Interesting, if true. But is it?

[[Mod. note -- Think about what we know about neutrinos: they only interact
*very* weakly with matter. In particular, most neutrinos incident on a
detector go right through the detector... indeed, they go right through
the entire *Earth* without ever interacting with it. (I'm using "interacting"
here in the particle-physics sense, i.e., I'm ignoring the gravitational
interaction.) Without an interaction, converting "a portion of their
kinetic energy" into electricity isn't going to get very far.

Despite what the technobabble on that website suggests, neutrino
interactions with matter aren't similar in any useful sense to photon
interactions with a solar cell. Notably, most of the solar photons
incident on a solar cell *do* interact with the solar cell (they're
absorbed or reflected).

There have been past claims of stronger neutrino interactions with matter,
but these claims have proven to be wrong. Nobably, in the 1970s Weber
[This was the same Joseph Weber who also claimed
huge-amplitude gravitational-wave detections that
noone else could confirm.]
claimed that an N-atom crystal would coherently scatter neutrinos with
a cross section which scaled as $N^2$), but both experiment and theory
strongly refuted these claims. (A nice example of a refuting experiment
is Franson & Jacobs (1992) ["Null result for enhanced neutrino scattering
in crystals", Physical Review A vol 46, pages 2235-2239].)

The referenced patent is irrelevant -- it's about a production process
for metal films, and doesn't present any evidence for neutrino electricity
production.

Overall, the referenced website reminds me a lot of some of the examples
described in this classic book:

Arthur W. J. Ord-Hume
"Perpetual Motion: The History of an Obsession"
St. Martins, Press, 1980, paperback ISBN 0-312-60131-X

-- jt]]

[Jos Bergervoet]

On 20/12/25 10:41 PM, Gary Harnagel wrote:
> Has anyone seen this:
>
> "Neutrino Power Cubes can transform portions of energy into power"
>
> https://neutrinovoltaic.com/en/
>
> https://patents.google.com/patent/WO2016142056A1/en
>
> Interesting, if true.

Still the energy output of the sun is only about 4e24 whereas its total
energy production is 3.8e26. So even with 100% energy conversion we'd
only get one tenth of what ordinary solar panels (with 10% conversion
efficiency) will give us.

So I think most Dyson spheres (especially the cheaper ones) will not
harvest the neutrino energy at all!

--
Jos

[Gary Harnagel]

On Friday, December 25, 2020 at 10:38:40 PM UTC-7, Jos Bergervoet wrote:
> On 20/12/25 10:41 PM, Gary Harnagel wrote:
> > Has anyone seen this:
> >
> > "Neutrino Power Cubes can transform portions of energy into power"
> >
> > https://neutrinovoltaic.com/en/
> >
> > https://patents.google.com/patent/WO2016142056A1/en
> >
> > Interesting, if true.
>
> Still the energy output of the sun is only about 4e24 whereas its total
> energy production is 3.8e26. So even with 100% energy conversion we'd
> only get one tenth of what ordinary solar panels (with 10% conversion
> efficiency) will give us.

I did that calculation and got 16 mW/cm² at earth orbit (flux of about
10^11/cm²/sec/MeV)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_neutrino#Observed_data

Of course, only capturing an unknown fraction, but it would be available
at night, too :-)

But I was thinking that it would be great for DETECTING neutrinos without
having 40 tons of cleaning fluid in your pocket.

> So I think most Dyson spheres (especially the cheaper ones) will not
> harvest the neutrino energy at all!
>
> --
> Jos

Thanks. The only thing that made me think there MIGHT be something to
it was a mention of "resonance," meaning they might be structurally tuned
to a particular energy.

OTOH, it sounds suspiciously like cold fusion and a few other claims that
never came to fruition.

[Jos Bergervoet]

On 20/12/26 8:44 PM, Gary Harnagel wrote:
> On Friday, December 25, 2020 at 10:38:40 PM UTC-7, Jos Bergervoet wrote=

:
>> On 20/12/25 10:41 PM, Gary Harnagel wrote:
>>> Has anyone seen this:
>>>
>>> "Neutrino Power Cubes can transform portions of energy into power"
>>>
>>> https://neutrinovoltaic.com/en/
>>>
>>> https://patents.google.com/patent/WO2016142056A1/en
>>>
>>> Interesting, if true.
>>

>> Still the energy output of the sun is only about 4e24 whereas its tota=

l
>> energy production is 3.8e26. So even with 100% energy conversion we'd
>> only get one tenth of what ordinary solar panels (with 10% conversion
>> efficiency) will give us.

>=20
> I did that calculation and got 16 mW/cm=C2=B2 at earth orbit (flux of a=
bout
> 10^11/cm=C2=B2/sec/MeV)
>=20
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_neutrino#Observed_data

By just using a quick lookup I got results saying that this neutrino
output only carries about 1% of the solar energy, like here:
<https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2020/12/14/8-facts-about-th=
e-suns-most-ghostly-particle-the-neutrino/?sh=3D3ce42a9815d0>
Your calculation looks more like 10% of the solar output.. (so do
we still have a 'solar neutrino problem' here?

> ... The only thing that made me think there MIGHT be something to
> it was a mention of "resonance," meaning they might be structurally tu=
ned
> to a particular energy.
>=20
> OTOH, it sounds suspiciously like cold fusion and a few other claims th=
at
> never came to fruition.

I think it sounds a lot like the claims about axion capture in a
Josephson junction. Also there, a small device would then be able
to capture them, avoiding the use of bulkier and more elaborate
methods that are in use by e.g. ADMX.
Christian Beck proposed this resonance mechanism some years ago:=20
<https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2015PDU.....7....6B/abstract>
I've seen no indication since then that it was successful, but of
course tricks like that sometimes do work (a simple ferrite rod
with tuned winding in an AM receiver is a clear example..)

--=20
Jos