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JoshuaZ comments on Crazy Ideas Thread - October 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion

7 Post author: Gunnar_Zarncke 06 October 2015 10:38PM

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Comment author: JoshuaZ 07 October 2015 07:06:18PM 8 points [-]

Slightly crazy idea I've been bouncing around for a while: put giant IceCube style neutrino detectors on Mars and Europa. Europa would work really well because of all the water ice. This would allow one to get time delay data from neutrino bursts during a supernova to get very fast directional information as well as some related data.

Comment author: CellBioGuy 10 October 2015 12:48:14AM *  1 point [-]

Spreading around gamma ray detectors would have similar advantages.

Comment author: JoshuaZ 10 October 2015 01:08:46AM 2 points [-]

Yes, but there's less reason for that. A big part of the problem with neutrinos is that since only a small fraction are absorbed, it becomes much harder to get good data on what is going on. For example, the typical neutrino pulse from a supernova is estimated to last 5 seconds to 30 seconds, while the Earth is under a tenth of a second in diameter. Gamma rays don't have quite as much of this problem and we can sort of estimate their directional data better.

On the other hand, the more recent work with neutrinos has been getting better and better at getting angle data which lets us get the same directional data to some extent.