A solar neutrino problem?
- 1 September 1990
- journal article
- other
- Published by IOP Publishing in Physics World
- Vol. 3 (9) , 20-21
- https://doi.org/10.1088/2058-7058/3/9/18
Abstract
Solar neutrino experiments, designed to detect the neutrinos generated in the nuclear fusion processes in the Sun, provide the only direct way to test our basic understanding as to 'why the sun is shining'. For almost 20 years, the only experiment of this kind was the chlorine detector in the Homestake gold mine, South Dakota, USA, run by Ray Davis (now at the University of Pennsylvania at Philadelphia) and colleagues at the Brookhaven National Laboratory. It has long since been known that the result from this experiment is about a factor of four lower than the theoretical perdiction from the 'standard solar model' (SSM). This discrepancy is known as the 'solar neutrino problem'. The radiochemical Cl detector relies on the fact that 37Cl atoms capture neutrinos thereby forming 37Ar. These 37Ar atoms are subsequently extracted from the target liquid and counted by observing their radioactive decay in a proportional counter.Keywords
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