An invisible fence blocks the strait. You can't climb over it or dive under it: it's not made of steel, but of a stream of particles penetrating the water column. That's one way to describe the idea of detecting nuclear submarines by their antineutrino emission. A nuclear reactor works like an unquenchable lamp, emitting billions of these particles every second. They barely interact with matter and pass freely through the submarine's hull and kilometers of water.
The authors of the new study estimated whether such a "neutrino fence" could be built in strategically important straits. The key parameter is detector mass. The larger the mass, the higher the chance of catching a rare antineutrino. In the Strait of Gibraltar, which is only about 14 kilometers wide, a 20-kiloton detector (roughly the weight of three Eiffel Towers) could spot a submarine with a reactor thermal power of 100 megawatts. Even in the most unfavorable detection scenario, the instrument would register a signal with about 50% probability and only occasionally give a false alarm.
If you place not one but three detectors in a line, reliability increases dramatically. However, in wide ocean passages like the Greenland-Iceland-UK Gap, the task becomes more challenging. There, the distance between detectors must be increased, and achieving acceptable sensitivity requires dozens of instruments. With a spacing of 5 kilometers between neighboring detectors, a group of 80 still yields a rather modest result.
The calculations show that the technology is on the edge of feasibility. It requires large-mass detectors placed on the seabed, where there is less interference from cosmic rays. For now, this is just a feasibility assessment, but it outlines a path toward a fundamentally new surveillance tool. If engineers ever build such a system, it could scan straits around the clock without revealing itself. And then the invisible fence of particles would become a reality.
Antineutrinos from a single reactor pass through your fingernail in numbers of tens of billions per second, but only one of them will stop in your body in a lifetime.
In Heinlein's novel "Starship Troopers," "neutrino detectors" are mentioned for finding ships, although they work differently there.