A super-powered neutrino generator could in theory be used to
instantly destroy nuclear weapons anywhere on the planet,
according to a team of Japanese scientists. If it was ever
built, a state could use the device to obliterate the nuclear
arsenal of its enemy by firing a beam of neutrinos straight
through the Earth. But the generator would need to be more than
a hundred times more powerful than any existing particle
accelerator and over 1000 kilometres wide. "It is really quite
futuristic," Alfons Weber, a neutrino scientist at Oxford
University, UK, told New Scientist. "But the maths and physics
seems to be right." John Cobb, another researcher at Oxford
University, cautions: "It might be technically feasible, given
massive investment, but there are still unsolved problems."