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Detecting Geoneutrinos
It is also possible to study the interior composition of the Earth through detection of geoneutrinos produced by beta decays of radioactive elements present in the crust. Some elements of interest include U, Th and K because of their abundance in rocks and their half-life is comparable to the life of a planet on the scale of billions of years, which leads to heating of the Earth’s surface via radiogenic heating. When such elements emit antineutrino particles through beta minus decay, it interacts with atomic protons in the scintillator, which then produces a positron and a neutron (INSERT REACTION). The positron eventually decays into two 511 keV photons. The neutron, the other product from the antineutrino-proton reaction, gets captured by a proton via the neutron-capture process which releases a 2.22 MeV photon. In combination, these two signals appear as a coincidence detection with some delay making it possible to discriminate against many background signals, such as muons, yielding high resolution data. The Borexino collaboration states that the main source of residual background comes from electron neutrinos produced by European nuclear reactors.