They were surprised that the sun is a giant nuclear reactor? I wasn’t.
Okey Dokey....
Sounds good.
Does this mean that fusion power on earth is just 25 years away?
Good neutrino detectors are just as interesting. They would allow communication directly through Earth, which isn’t possible with electromagnetic radiation. Applications could be submarine communication and faster stock market arbitration trading.
I wish these scientists could find myloan sock that I lost doing my laundry this weekend
Our sun generates almost 99% of its energy from a fairly straight forward fusion of hydrogen atoms. Less than 2% of its energy is thought to be generated by a process called the CNO cycle.
Almost 100 years ago two German physicists predicted that large massive stars generate most of their energy from the CNO cycle, which is hydrogen fusion that is catalyzed by Carbon-Nitrogen-Oxygen.
Since there is no practical way to observe fusion inside a star, we can only study the particles and the energy released by the fusion process.
CNO fusion was predicted to release a unique neutrino signature.
Because neutrinos have no charge and almost zero mass, they are really, really hard to detect, and CNO neutrinos are especially hard to detect, at least in part because they are relatively rare in Earth's cosmic neighborhood.
This experiment was carried out in a lab under a mountain in central Italy. A large stainless steel container, filled with an organic compound in liquid form, was used to create and measure CNO neutrino scintillations.
Three USA universities devised a method to purify the liquid organic compound to a level never achieved before, which made the experiment possible for the first time.
The article does not say: Who proposed the nearly 100-year-old theory?