Rare ghostly particles produced inside the sun just detected under a mountain in Italy

[smp]

From Space.com:
"For the first time ever, physicists have spotted rare, ghostly particles produced by a weird kind of fusion inside the sun.

The particles, called CNO-produced neutrinos, traveled from the sun to a detector buried deep beneath a mountain in Italy. This discovery brings humans one step closer to understanding the fiery nuclear reactions fueling our home star.

"With this outcome," physicist Gioacchino Ranucci, a physicist at Italy's National Institute for Nuclear Physics in Milan, told Live Science. "Borexino has completely unraveled the two processes powering the sun." "

https://www.space.com/rare-solar-cno-ne ... ected.html

I didn't know if this fit in either Astronomy or Space Exploration news, so I decided to put it here in the Solar Forum. :smile:

smp

[helicon]

Wow very interesting Stephen. Seems like a pretty big breakthrough. And it's shocking to learn that neutrinos are bombarding us pretty much all the time.

[Graeme1858]

Quite a step forward in particle physics. I wonder if they differ more so than just different flavors or from their electron, muon or tau source?

Regards

Graeme

[notFritzArgelander]

From Space.com:
"For the first time ever, physicists have spotted rare, ghostly particles produced by a weird kind of fusion inside the sun.

The particles, called CNO-produced neutrinos, traveled from the sun to a detector buried deep beneath a mountain in Italy. This discovery brings humans one step closer to understanding the fiery nuclear reactions fueling our home star.

"With this outcome," physicist Gioacchino Ranucci, a physicist at Italy's National Institute for Nuclear Physics in Milan, told Live Science. "Borexino has completely unraveled the two processes powering the sun." "

https://www.space.com/rare-solar-cno-ne ... ected.html

I didn't know if this fit in either Astronomy or Space Exploration news, so I decided to put it here in the Solar Forum. :smile:

smp

The astrophysics forum is another likely place.

Quite a step forward in particle physics. I wonder if they differ more so than just different flavors or from their electron, muon or tau source?

Regards

Graeme

No exotic new flavor required. The neutrinos from the CNO cycle are the same flavor as from the p-p cycle. The energy is different and more difficult to detect.

[Graeme1858]

So has it always been known that there are neutrinos at differing energy levels or is this the gist of the new discovery?

Regards

Graeme

[notFritzArgelander]

So has it always been known that there are neutrinos at differing energy levels or is this the gist of the new discovery?

Regards

Graeme

It's always been known that the (electron flavor) neutrinos from the 99% dominant p-p cycle and the minority 1% CNO cycle in the Sun have different energies, The CNO neutrinos are higher in energy but not as abundant as the p-p neutrinos leading to greater difficulty in detection.

The spectra are discussed in this article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_neutrino which makes the amusing point that because of the effect the mass of the Earths on the neutrinos that the night-time measurements differ a bit from the day time.

They've been known theoretically since from when I was a schoolboy. So this is mostly just an experimental confirmation of established theory. Good to have. A great experiment! But no revolution.

BTW for every cubic cm of your body there are also hundreds of neutrinos from the Big Bang zipping by.

PS The space.com article is wrong in giving the impression that different kinds of neutrinos are involved. The rarity of CNO reactions in the Sun is due to the lower central temperature in the Sun compared to more massive stars.