Physics · the experiment
Make the Sun your neutrino source
Source experiments see only 0.817 of the captures expected in gallium. Your turn to use the Sun as the source: recover its flux, switch its neutrinos on one by one, then put the idea of a smaller cross-section to the test.
1 · Recover the pp flux from the Sun's brightness
Borexino and SNO measure the ⁷Be, CNO and ⁸B neutrinos. The most numerous ones, the pp neutrinos, are missing.
Beginner
Why use the Sun as the source, rather than a new radioactive source?
Every helium nucleus made releases 26.731 MeV and two neutrinos: counting neutrinos is counting energy. Set the pp flux so that, together with the measured ⁷Be, CNO and ⁸B fluxes, it gives back the Sun's measured brightness, within its uncertainty.
2 · Switch the Sun on, source by source
Intermediate
Source experiments see 0.817 of the expected rate. If the Sun showed the same shortfall, how many SNU would the detectors have measured?
Switch on the five solar neutrino sources. Each one adds the captures it should produce in gallium; compare the total with the 66.1 ± 3.1 SNU measured by SAGE and Gallex/GNO.
3 · Test Cadeddu's hypothesis
Cadeddu and colleagues propose a cross-section 20% lower. Your slider applies it to the sources' expected rates and to the whole solar prediction, more than 90% of which rests on it.
Expert
With a cross-section 20% lower, where would the solar point, now at 0.980, land?
Lower the cross-section to 80% of Haxton and Rule's, and watch where the sources and the Sun go.
4 · Give gallium its cross-section back
Expert
The Sun confirms the extraction and counting of germanium in the solar runs. What about the source experiments?
Give gallium back Haxton and Rule's cross-section, and recover the paper's figure.
Solar test redone
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