Neutrino detection, directly revealing for the first time that the carbon-nitrogen-oxygen (CNO) fusion-cycle is at work in our sun

[HAL9000]

Background, I've discovered that astonomer's have a strange definition of what a metal is .

In astronomy, metallicity is the abundance of elements present in an object that are heavier than hydrogen or helium. Most of the normal physical matter in the Universe is either hydrogen and helium, and astronomers use the word "metals" as a convenient short term for "all elements except hydrogen and helium". This usage is distinct from the usual physical definition of a solid metal. Stars and nebulae with relatively high abundances of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and neon are called "metal-rich" in astrophysical terms, even though those elements are non-metals in chemistry.

Metallicity - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

A report in Nature this week, detection of neutrinos from the sun, reveals the carbon-nitrogen-oxygen (CNO) fusion-cycle is at work in our sun.

For much of their life, stars get energy by fusing hydrogen into helium, he adds. In stars like our sun or lighter, this mostly happens through the 'proton-proton' chains. However, many stars are heavier and hotter than our sun, and include elements heavier than helium in their composition, a quality known as metallicity. The prediction since the 1930's is that the CNO-cycle will be dominant in heavy stars.

Physicist Andrea Pocar at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Pocar says neutrinos are really the only direct probe science has for the core of stars, including the sun, but they are exceedingly difficult to measure. As many as 420 billion of them hit every square inch of the earth's surface per second, yet virtually all pass through without interacting.

Neutrinos yield first experimental evidence of catalyzed fusion dominant in many stars

An international team of about 100 scientists of the Borexino Collaboration, including particle physicist Andrea Pocar at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, report in Nature this week detection of neutrinos from the sun, directly revealing for the first time that the carbon-nitrogen-oxygen...

phys.org

 

[blossie33]

Neutrinos really fascinate me, I first heard a scientist talking about them in the Herzog film about Antarctica where they were trying to track some by sending up an air balloon into the atmosphere.
There was a lecture by a Japanese scientist at Japan House in Kensington a couple of years ago which I went to, he explained fairly simply with the aid of diagrams so I was able to get the general gist of it with my limited Biology O level it really is mind blowing stuff!