http://www.space.com/26959-solar-neutrinos-sun-fusion-detection.html?cmpid=514630_20140827_30571636 This... is actually really freaking cool.
What I'd like to know is what this entails for us in a practical sense - this seems like a large shift in knowledge in understanding how the Sun works... now, what can we DO with this info?
Actually, Kittamaru, it is our technology advancing to the point that we can now "take a 'neutrino photograph' " to confirm some aspects of our current 'model(knowledge/understanding)' of the workings of our Sun. So...not a "large shift in knowledge in understanding how the Sun works". It is rather just the ability to build an instrument that seems to be able to detect the previously undetectable 'subatomic particles, called neutrinos'...i.e., "the Borexino detector".
*nods* Indeed DMOE - now that we have confirmed this, though... where do we go? What does this instrument allows us to do? I'm asking because, legitimately, I do not know - this is a bit "above my pay grade" so to speak.
From the article itself: "Combined with previous solar neutrino measurements, the Borexino experiment strongly confirmed the nature of the particles." From Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudbury_Neutrino_Observatory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_neutrino This is in direct opposition to the introduction of the article which read: "Tiny particles forged in the heart of the sun have been detected for the first time, offering scientists a glimpse into the nuclear fusion core of our closest star." This might explain it better: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/solar-neutrinos-detected-borexino/ In other words, neutrinos from the sun have been detected before; this report is of the lower-energy pp neutrinos being detected, rather than those previously detected. they flavor-oscillation also appears re-confirmed, again establishing rest-mass for the neutrino, and a less-than-c flight speed.
Yesterday's news TODAY. This might be news for the new Boraxeno neutrino detector in Italy, but solar neutrinos (or at least, 1/3 of the total solar neutrino flux) were observed by Ray Davis' Homestake mine perchloroethane detector in the 1960s. It's nice that Italy has a new detector, and that it is an improved design, but solar neutrinos are anything but "news".
Well, as I mentioned above, solar neutrinos have been detected before, yes. But there actually is some improvement in the detecting ability, and they are detecting the much more difficult to detect, much lower energy pp fusion neutrinos. They actually have to overcome the C-14 background noise of the occasional two simultaneous decays of low-E betas and their neutrinos, which are very similar in energy. It's just that the headline over-hypes it as if it were the first time to detect solar neutrinos - not - but the first time to detect this particular type of neutrino. read the SA article I linked.
actually, there are and has been a handful of neutrino detectors around the world. look into two neutrinos referred to as bert and Ernie even less energetic neutrinos have been detected by icecude alone.
http://icecube.wisc.edu/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IceCube_Neutrino_Observatory we had another thread about those neutrinos, before
As your link details.......We always knew how the Sun worked...one of those near certain theories that have gained concrete status over the years. This just confirmed with even more certainty, our theory of stellar production/fusion. And when that happens, it is a "Eureka moment" for cosmology.
Bingo! From memory, the flavour oscillation was the solution to the earlier neutrino problem and the fact that they were not being detected from the Sun, in the numbers that the theory predicted.