On Sep 25, 2009, at 4:06 PM, Mauro Lacy wrote:
The problem with this is that neutrinos are said to interact very feebly with matter. Whatever the reason or reasons are for these fluctuations, its mechanisms are outside the actual physics paradigm. And that's the most interesting ingredient in all this.
Well, this is the conventional view. However, neutrinos are spin 1/2 particles, and thus carry a magnetic field. The force of purely magnetic dipole fields is a 1/r^4 force, and thus at some small distance exceeds that of the 1/r^2 Coulomb force. Its effect can only be significant at a sub-atomic level. The neutrino interacts with matter with such a small cross section that secondary telltales of interactions, such as non-weak force involved magnetic interactions with nuclei, are not easily detectable except through excess heat. Though the Coulomb cross section is small, this does not mean that MeV energy carrying neutrinos are impotent to effect changes in the half-life of a nucleus via magnetic interactions, especially catalytic interactions.
The magnetic dipole moment of the neutrino is small and as yet undetermined as it is a function of the neutrinos mass. It is given by:
Mu_v = 3x 10^-19 (Mv/(1 eV) mu_B Where mu_B is the Bohr magneton and Mv is the neutrino mass. See: http://arxiv.org/pdf/hep-ph/9508333v2 Best regards, Horace Heffner http://www.mtaonline.net/~hheffner/
