{"id":632215,"date":"2026-09-22T07:14:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-22T07:14:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/632215\/"},"modified":"2026-09-22T07:14:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-22T07:14:09","slug":"new-research-suggests-that-a-neutrino-laser-is-impossible","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/632215\/","title":{"rendered":"New Research Suggests That A Neutrino Laser Is Impossible"},"content":{"rendered":"

As cool as it would have been to wield lasers that produce a beam of neutrinos, recently two papers were published by MIT researchers that seem to dampen the likelihood<\/a> of such lasers being at all possible. In a review paper<\/a> by [Ana Maria Rey] et al. these two papers are investigated in more detail.<\/p>\n

Although the concept behind a neutrino laser is rather simple, using the same superradiance effect involving a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) that allows for stimulation by photons to result in a synchronized direction of emitted photons, the idea of using a BEC of radioisotopes that naturally emit neutrinos in this fashion has now been effectively shot down.<\/p>\n

The problem lies in taking the leap from photons with a BEC and applying this to a BEC of radioisotopes. Whereas photons are relatively slow and low-energy at a mere 1 eV, a neutrino<\/a> is extremely fast and at 1+ MeV correspondingly has a much greater kinetic effect on the particle that emitted it. Unlike a photon emitted by an atom, this leaves precious little time for the other particles in the BEC to be affected.<\/p>\n

This first scenario is covered in the (paywalled) paper<\/a> by [Yu-Kun Lu] et al. with their calculations showing that superradiance cannot occur with neutrinos in a BEC and thus a laser is impossible. In the (also paywalled) second paper<\/a> by [Hanzhen Lin] et al. the question is asked whether the assumption that a BEC of a radioisotope will at all enhance radioactive decay, to which the answer is a curt \u2018no\u2019.<\/p>\n

Although it\u2019s impossible to prove a negative with the scientific method, these two studies have slammed close a couple of doors on the concept of a neutrino laser.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As cool as it would have been to wield lasers that produce a beam of neutrinos, recently two…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":632216,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[61,60,248,82],"class_list":["post-632215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-physics","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-physics","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/632215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=632215"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/632215\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/632216"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=632215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=632215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=632215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}