2 mo. ago • 90%

Have neutrinos ever been used in some sci-fi premise?

Seems like fertile ground for coming up with something fun and interesting ... a whole shadow universe that barely touches ours ... but I don't think I've ever seen it.

24 comments

yes, they're an extremely common sci-fi presence in comics, movies, video games, pretty much any half-science dimensional thing you need to happen that can't be explained.

the movie 2012 is about neutrinos going crazy after a solar flare, I'm having trouble finding the countless examples of neutrinos being used in comics because apparently a team called "the neutrinos" made their way into the TMNT universe at some point.

but yeah, it's pretty popular to hear neutrinos did this or that in sci-fi premises because of their omnipresence and weird behavior and not really understanding them.

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- apparently a team called "the neutrinos" made their way into the TMNT universe at some point
  
  So the creators themselves named their (super?)hero team after particles that are so insubstantial and ineffective that 99.8% of the entire universe will never even acknowledge their existence?
  
  Brütal.
  
  3
Jack Oneil kept calling them nintendos. 🤷

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- O'Neill. Two Ls.
  
  14
  
  "There's another Colonel O'Neil with one L. He has no sense of humor at all."
  
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  There's another colonel O'Neil with only one L. He has... no sense of humor at all.
  
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Professor Farnsworth teaches a course on the quantum fields they generate: https://youtu.be/3hvzmxarAh8

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- Ah yes, wonton burrito fields
  
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Every episode of Star Trek: TNG that isn't about tachyons.

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- Neutrino disturbances are how they found the wormhole in DS9.
  
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- Ha ... maybe ... I feel like they're just all the other random particles that come up in TNG-era trek ... maybe more so?
  
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In the later books of the three Body Problem series they use them for long range directional communications.

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I watched Alien: Covenant the other day - it's a 'neutrino storm' that initially disabled their ship (you can't predict 'em, apparently)

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- that feels, perhaps not coincidentally ... like it shouldn't make sense ... like neutrinos don't really interact with normal matter, that's kinda their deal, right ... unless it was something to do with fusion engines or soemthing?
  
  4
  
  Obligatory:
  https://what-if.xkcd.com/73/
  
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  Yeah, it overloaded their energy collection sail. Though humanity solved M theory in that setting so maybe they can derive energy from neutrinos… somehow.
  
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- I can usually pass off on the dumb science, but that one still makes me mad.
  
  "There's a neutrino storm coming!"
  
  "So?"
  
  "Quadrillions of them per square meter!"
  
  "So?"
  
  "You don't underst... Never mind. It's over."
  
  1
The neutrinos! They're changing!!!!

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aren't they constantly mentioned in star trek.

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In Arthur C. Clarke's The Songs of Distant Earth the Sun has gone nova due to the Solar Neutrino Anomaly that was still unsolved at the time he wrote the book.

In Charles Stross' Iron Sunrise the whole population of a solar system receives a technically lethal dose of neutrinos when their star is caused to go nova (technically lethal because it doesn't have time to kill them, as they die seconds later when the rest of the exploding star hits them).

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Some believe you can harness them for free energy

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- Huh
  
  1
I learned about them in my wonton burrito fields class

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