11th Mar, 2022
Question
Asked 1st Mar, 2012
Can Ever neutrons be directly accelerated by any means of energy ?
If your answer is no; yes it is by thermal energy
Most recent answer
Riccardo Bernardini This is an interesting article. But search "neutron accelerator" on Google and you get many tens of thousands of entry points. The neutron has a magnetic moment, so is affected by any magnetic gradient. Actually by any energy density gradient of the right size and timing. But it is a well developed and valuable technique.
I have been following neutron control methods for many years, but I am looking at low cost methods for research and development groups. And for low and middle income countries. Neutron sources can be tuned, neutrons can be slowed, neutrons can be focused, neutron activation and scattering have many uses. Lots of useful things now. The same methods (and better ones) work on any particle of any size that has a permanent or induced magnetic or electric moment.
("accelerating neutrons" OR "neutron accelerator") has 102,000 entry points (Google, 11 Mar 2022).
If you search for "The development of a low energy neutron accelerator for rebunching pulsed neutrons" there are a few places the PDF is posted.
If you see their equation (1) it has the usual B^2 term that is a good indication that energy density gradient methods are the low cost way to handle it. I have been at this for just over 40 years now. Lots of times the original ideas and methods never amount to much, even if a lot of money gets spent. It is when it gets into "engineering" stage that new products, devices and applications for society happen. With more sensitive amplifiers and ADCs, with high sampling rates and low latency monitoring of real time data streams, many things that were "impossible" a year ago, are possible now. Every day I read the "old" books and papers from the 40's, 50's, 60's, 70's, 80's, 90's, 00's and 10's to see places they said "impossible", and what they should have said, "not economic or possible with our current sensors, computers and algorithms". And that has changed, dramatically, in the last year or so.
I try to track those things every day for the Internet Foundation. Because the methods of the Internet depend on those same technologies applied to problems in all parts of human society.
Richard Collins, The Internet Foundation
3 Recommendations
Popular answers (1)
11th Mar, 2022
Riccardo Bernardini This is an interesting article. But search "neutron accelerator" on Google and you get many tens of thousands of entry points. The neutron has a magnetic moment, so is affected by any magnetic gradient. Actually by any energy density gradient of the right size and timing. But it is a well developed and valuable technique.
I have been following neutron control methods for many years, but I am looking at low cost methods for research and development groups. And for low and middle income countries. Neutron sources can be tuned, neutrons can be slowed, neutrons can be focused, neutron activation and scattering have many uses. Lots of useful things now. The same methods (and better ones) work on any particle of any size that has a permanent or induced magnetic or electric moment.
("accelerating neutrons" OR "neutron accelerator") has 102,000 entry points (Google, 11 Mar 2022).
If you search for "The development of a low energy neutron accelerator for rebunching pulsed neutrons" there are a few places the PDF is posted.
If you see their equation (1) it has the usual B^2 term that is a good indication that energy density gradient methods are the low cost way to handle it. I have been at this for just over 40 years now. Lots of times the original ideas and methods never amount to much, even if a lot of money gets spent. It is when it gets into "engineering" stage that new products, devices and applications for society happen. With more sensitive amplifiers and ADCs, with high sampling rates and low latency monitoring of real time data streams, many things that were "impossible" a year ago, are possible now. Every day I read the "old" books and papers from the 40's, 50's, 60's, 70's, 80's, 90's, 00's and 10's to see places they said "impossible", and what they should have said, "not economic or possible with our current sensors, computers and algorithms". And that has changed, dramatically, in the last year or so.
I try to track those things every day for the Internet Foundation. Because the methods of the Internet depend on those same technologies applied to problems in all parts of human society.
Richard Collins, The Internet Foundation
3 Recommendations
All Answers (18)
Particle accelerators bro.. Long way to go.. Neutrons are accelerated by almost all kinds of energy.. There are other factors deciding which is best..
Stars emit neutrons so that is by thermal energy and are also carried along by waves of light (photons) along with electrons and other particles from space.
You could bombard a neutron like in a neutron bomb which uses uranium 253, or uranium 265 where the uranium is smashed into the other piece of uranium usually by a small explosion that is powerful enough to send the neutrons out of the uranium atom into the next - uranium has got a high number of electrons protons and neutrons so it all gets released and causes a neutron chain reaction.
Neutrons are bigger than electrons and protons and are usually at the center of atoms as said above a particle accelerator can propel neutrons - usually a particle accelerator accelerates protons by speeding up electrons (electrons is usually the force measured in electron volts (ev)) so if you see a particle accelerator measurement of 20tev that is 20 tera electronvolts or 20 to the power of 1 billion billion electron volts. The CERN Particle accelerator managed to get them up to speeds greater than the speed of light 99.999 C
If you are thinking of making a time machine let me know !!
1 Recommendation
throw some light on the statement in the quotes.
Stars emit neutrons so that is by thermal energy and are also "carried along by waves of light (photons) along with electrons and other particles from space".
I think I missed that one in all my years of learning. Cos, if its so, why would CERN taking even the weakest chances of of finding Higgs boson at their facility with this much resources?
I mean It could prove the existence of Higgs Mechanism and thereby Higgs Boson by observing the duality of photon itself right?
SIr,
I asked this question because i had recently created a proposal named "Thermal Neutron Accelerator " which can accelerate neutron with the help of thermal energy.
I need to get the comments on my idea.
Could you please help me ?
Thank You
I am afraid thats not my area of expertise. Maybe you can post your proposal's abstract in this plane and let the people discuss over it. Accelerating neutron itself involves a lot of thermal radiation. I dont know if a system can contain and observe the reactions as well.. ultimate reason for an accelerator is to study. You should keep that in mind while designing. All the Best..
OK, here's the tutorial for those of you who missed the relevant lectures:
Acceleration is produced when a force acts on an object. Neutrons have zero charge, so electric fields don't exert force on them. They have mass so gravity does act on them. They have a magnetic dipole moment, so they experience a force in a magnetic field gradient. Both of these forces are extremely small and can't be used to give neutrons much energy in an "accelerator" small enough to fit on the Earth. If you want fast neutrons you can get them by accelerating protons or heavy ions and using them to knock out fast neutrons or produce them from nuclear reactions, or you can use fission which emits fast neutrons.
"Thermal acceleration" is a nonsense term. "Thermal neutrons" are neutrons which have scattered (bounced) off protons and other neutrons, losing and gaining energy with each bounce, until they have the same average energy as the other particles in the mix, which are characterized by a temperature. They don't bounce very often, that's why nuclear reactors have to be built so big. But you don't get acceleration that way, you get desired deceleration from the fast neutrons generated in fission down to slow ones that are more readily absorbed by a fissionable nucleus, which "tickles" the nucleus into splitting and emitting a few more fast neutrons.
21st Mar, 2012
European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT)
As Carlos said, Neutrons have no charge and cannot be accelerated by electromagnetic fields. However, this is just one of the four forces in nature and the other three do act upon them - the strong and weak nuclear forces, and gravity.
Given the electromagnetic force is the only one we have any real control over with modern technology, this is what is used in accelerators such as at CERN - which I would note here has NOT accelerated neutrons (or anything else) beyond the speed of light, despite what Michael says above. Accelerating to or beyond light speed is not possible, and the maximum velocities achieved at CERN are 99.9999991% of light speed. CERN accelerates protons and antiprotons (not electrons or neutrons) with powerful electromagnetic fields - these don't just accelerate the particle beams, they are also vital for guiding the beams.
So, if you want to accelerate neutrons, you're going to have a difficult time. You could in principle accelerate them through a constant bombardment with other particles or photons, but unlike charged particles you cannot correct any inaccuracies in your velocity vector (including their initial velocity), so ensure your particles arrive where you want them to, or keep them in a focused beam for you to apply your acceleration process. Since you cannot guide your particles, you would need some means of tracking them, which would also interfere with your acceleration process.
1 Recommendation
As Carlos said above we are dealing here with mass and no eletrical charge. The huge interest in understanding gravity is directly related to being able to control it and thereby willingly accelerate or slow down chargeless particles.
@Peter Heindl : Tachyons are hypothetical particles proposed as a joke in a paper published on Fools Day, if I'm not mistaken (maybe, submitted on that day because the publication date is rarely at the authors' control). Nobody was able to prove that such particles might not exist (that was the essence of the paper). Neither anybody ever saw such particles.
You can electromagnetically accelerate neutrons belonging to Tritium or Deuterium nuclei (i.e. positive ions).
1 Recommendation
Neutrons have a spin and can be accelerated with a RF flipper. The Zeeman potential energy leads to a slight change of the neutron velocity due to the Lorentz force when traversing a field gradient. The velocity change is 0.0025% for 8Å neutrons passing in 1T field.
This could be of interest
From the article (top of pag. 2)
"It is well known that a particle with a magnetic dipole moment such as a neutron must undergo an acceleration in an inhomogeneous magnetic field. More recently it has been shown that a magnetic dipole in homogeneous magnetic and electric fields must undergo an acceleration both classically and quantum mechanically."
1 Recommendation
11th Mar, 2022
Riccardo Bernardini This is an interesting article. But search "neutron accelerator" on Google and you get many tens of thousands of entry points. The neutron has a magnetic moment, so is affected by any magnetic gradient. Actually by any energy density gradient of the right size and timing. But it is a well developed and valuable technique.
I have been following neutron control methods for many years, but I am looking at low cost methods for research and development groups. And for low and middle income countries. Neutron sources can be tuned, neutrons can be slowed, neutrons can be focused, neutron activation and scattering have many uses. Lots of useful things now. The same methods (and better ones) work on any particle of any size that has a permanent or induced magnetic or electric moment.
("accelerating neutrons" OR "neutron accelerator") has 102,000 entry points (Google, 11 Mar 2022).
If you search for "The development of a low energy neutron accelerator for rebunching pulsed neutrons" there are a few places the PDF is posted.
If you see their equation (1) it has the usual B^2 term that is a good indication that energy density gradient methods are the low cost way to handle it. I have been at this for just over 40 years now. Lots of times the original ideas and methods never amount to much, even if a lot of money gets spent. It is when it gets into "engineering" stage that new products, devices and applications for society happen. With more sensitive amplifiers and ADCs, with high sampling rates and low latency monitoring of real time data streams, many things that were "impossible" a year ago, are possible now. Every day I read the "old" books and papers from the 40's, 50's, 60's, 70's, 80's, 90's, 00's and 10's to see places they said "impossible", and what they should have said, "not economic or possible with our current sensors, computers and algorithms". And that has changed, dramatically, in the last year or so.
I try to track those things every day for the Internet Foundation. Because the methods of the Internet depend on those same technologies applied to problems in all parts of human society.
Richard Collins, The Internet Foundation
3 Recommendations
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...
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