STARS ESCAPE FROM ASTRONOMICAL ZOO

If there were a nova would ancient records show it, or is it possible such an event would pass without record such as during the Dark Ages?

Although European records were sparse during the Dark Ages, skywatchers in the Far East recorded transient objects they observed in the sky during that era. There is a list of transient objects in the General Catalog of Variable Stars, Volume III, (Moscow, 1973). The list covers sightings recorded between 2296 BC and 1690 AD.

The list is in places ambiguous because of difficulty in determining the precise location in the sky of some of the objects recorded; however, when the subject is Sirius, the brightest star in the sky, one is tempted to believe those ancient stargazers would have had no difficulty in pinpointing it for us.

Bear that in mind as I reveal that my review of the list turns up no reports of the brightening of Sirius or of the appearance of a "guest star" in its immediate vicinity.

Still, it is possible that a brightening of Sirius or the Pup could have been missed, if for example it occurred during a time when Sirius was lost in the sun's glare (Dog Days) and for a duration measured in days, not weeks or months.

Physics News Update
by Phillip F. Schewe and Ben Stein
October 11, 1990
Bulletin of Physics News
American Institute of Physics
THE SOLAR NEUTRINO PROBLEM PERSISTS. The "standard solar model" predicts that the Homestake neutrino detector, operated for 20 years by Ray Davis in a South Dakota gold mine, should observe an average of 1.8 solar neutrinos per day. Instead Davis' observed rate has consistently been much lower than this. Furthermore, the long-term rate, plotted as a function of time, shows an anticorrelation between neutrino rate and sunspot activity. The "solar neutrino problem" has in recent years been tackled by two other groups, and they too record puzzling results. Over a three year period the Kamiokande II detector in Japan sees a neutrino rate about half that expected by the standard model, roughly equal to Davis' average rate for the same period, but without the time variation seen at Homestake. Unlike Kamiokande and Homestake, which are sensitive only to the relatively high-energy neutrinos released in the beta decay of boron in the sun, the Soviet-American Gallium Experiment (SAGE) in the Caucasus (USSR) is designed to observe the lower-energy neutrinos coming from the more plentiful proton-proton fusion reactions in the sun. In five months of running, SAGE has observed essentially no neutrinos at all, further deepening the mystery. Some theorists believe that one explanation may be that solar neutrinos may be "oscillating" from one neutrino type (electron, muon, tau) to another on their way to the earth and thus evading detection. Meanwhile a fourth detector, Gallex, located in Italy, will soon begin operations. (Physics Today, October 1990.)
Physics News Update
by Phillip F. Schewe and Ben Stein
July 1, 1993
Bulletin of Physics News
American Institute of Physics
NEUTRINO MASS AND SOLAR NEUTRINO UPDATE . At the Moriond neutrino meeting held in February in Switzerland, the latest neutrino mass limits reported were 8 eV for the mass of the electron antineutrino (a Livermore result) and 7.2 eV for electron neutrinos (Mainz). Both limits were established in tritium beta decay experiments. As for the solar neutrino problem, a combination of results from the two gallium detector groups, SAGE (former Soviet Union) and GALLEX (Italy), gives a measured flux value of 72 solar neutrino units (one SNU equals 10**-36 neutrino captures per second per detector target atom). This is still low compared to the standard solar model prediction of 125-132 SNU. (CERN Courier, June 1993.)
Physics News Update
by Phillip F. Schewe and Ben Stein
October 3, 1996
Bulletin of Physics News
American Institute of Physics
SOLAR NEUTRINO FLUXES VARY WITH A PERIOD OF 21.3 DAYS. This is the conclusion of Stanford scientists Peter Sturrock and Guenther Walther who examined years' of data from the Homestake (South Dakota), Kamiokande (Japan), and GALLEX (Italy) neutrino detectors. Hypothetical causes of the periodicity include the rotation of magnetic fields inside the sun or a variability in the production of neutrinos in the solar core. (Science, 20 Sept.; New Scientist, 21 Sept.)
Neutrino mass discovered
Physics in Action
July 1998
Physics World
The SuperKamiokande result could also be important for big bang theory, which predicts that the universe contains a large background of neutrinos. If the neutrino mass was 1 eV, this would suggest that neutrinos account for more mass in the universe than all of the protons and neutrons put together. Neutrinos would therefore represent a significant amount of "dark matter", mass that we cannot see but is predicted to exist by cosmological models. The simplest interpretation of the solar and atmospheric results is that the heaviest neutrino has a mass of 0.1 eV. However, neutrino oscillations depend only on the differences in mass, so it is possible that all three masses are 1 eV or greater but that the mass differences are much smaller. Thus it is not clear how this new evidence relates to the dark matter problem.

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