John Clark, <jonkc@worldnet.att.net>, writes:
> In the second place, the chemical bonds in the rungs are much weaker
> than those in the backbone, although even the strongest chemical bonds
> are of only a few electron volts . I'm talking about average run of
> the mill radiation particles and they have thousands, often millions,
> and sometimes many billions of electron volts of energy.
Yes, at http://neutrino.pc.helsinki.fi/neutrino/nd-sn.html there is a chart of the neutrinos received from supernova 1987A. They mostly are in the range of 10 to 40 million electron volts. According to http://www.doh.wa.gov/phl/envchem/aqamass6.html energies of alpha particles from radioactive decay are typically in the range of 5 to 10 million electron volts. So supernova neutrinos appear to be a few times more energetic than such alpha particles (although much less likely to be absorbed, of course).
Hal