We gratefully acknowledge support from
the Simons Foundation and member institutions.
Full-text links:

Download:

Current browse context:

quant-ph

Change to browse by:

References & Citations

Bookmark

(what is this?)
CiteULike logo BibSonomy logo Mendeley logo del.icio.us logo Digg logo Reddit logo

Quantum Physics

Title: Unobserving the Moon: the spurious possibility of orbital decoupling due to solar neutrino Arago spot

Abstract: The Arago spot is an intensity maximum at the center of a shadow created by constructive interference of diffracted waves around a spherical object. While the study of diffraction patterns usually concerns visible light, de Broglie's wave nature of matter makes diffraction theory applicable for particles, such as neutrinos, as well. During a solar eclipse, some of the neutrinos emitted by the Sun are diffracted by the Moon, resulting in a diffraction pattern that can be observed on Earth. In this paper we consider the theoretically emerging solar neutrino Arago spot as a means to measure the location of the Moon with high accuracy and consider its implication on the orbit of the Moon given Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. Our results indicate that the Moon is not at immediate risk of orbital decoupling due to the observation of a solar neutrino Arago spot.
Comments: Prepared for April Fools' Day. 13 pages
Subjects: Quantum Physics (quant-ph); Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP); High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph); Popular Physics (physics.pop-ph)
Cite as: arXiv:2403.20087 [quant-ph]
  (or arXiv:2403.20087v1 [quant-ph] for this version)

Submission history

From: Jami Kinnunen [view email]
[v1] Fri, 29 Mar 2024 09:52:05 GMT (780kb,D)

Link back to: arXiv, form interface, contact.