In Nature: ‘Neutrinos reveal final secret of Sun’s nuclear fusion’
26 June 2020
14:00
Detection of particles produced by the Sun’s core supports long-held theory about how our star is powered.
By catching neutrinos emanating from the Sun’s core, physicists have filled in the last missing detail of how nuclear fusion powers the star.
The detection confirms decades-old theoretical predictions that some of the Sun’s energy is made by a chain of reactions involving carbon and nitrogen nuclei. This process fuses four protons to form a helium nucleus, which releases two neutrinos — the lightest known elementary particles of matter — as well as other subatomic particles and copious amounts of energy. This carbon–nitrogen (CN) reaction is not the Sun’s only fusion pathway: it produces less than 1% of the Sun’s energy. But it is thought to be the dominant energy source in larger stars. The results mark the first direct detection of neutrinos from this process.
