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The Borexino instrument is nestled deep in the Apennine mountains of Italy. Flashes of light inside its massive detector reveal the arrival of neutrinos in the electrons. By carefully collecting data from these neutrino-electron collisions over 10 years, scientists have created one of the most detailed snapshots of the sun's inflamed heart.
Credit: Borexino
Why is the sun shining?
Our local star is constantly breaking atoms at the bottom of its inflamed belly to produce its flaming light. But as this inner turmoil is hidden beneath the thick outer layers of the sun, scientists have little means to learn more about what is happening at the heart of the star.
But by collecting neutrinos – tiny ghostly particles that almost do not interact with other materials and can therefore fly directly from the center of the sun – the researchers produced one of the most detailed snapshots ever made of this mysterious interior.
"We are basically watching the sun in the heart," Andrea Pocar, physicist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, told Live Science. The results, published today (Oct. 24) in the journal Nature, will help solar physicists better understand our parent star. [Sun Storms: Incredible Photos of Solar Flares]
Gather neutrinos
The researchers created the snapshot using a colossal detector located at the center of the international Borexino experiment, installed inside a mountain range in Italy, to protect it from parasitic radiation. Each second, 420 billion sun neutrinos hit a surface area of the size of a postage stamp. However, according to a statement from the collaboration, most of these neutrinos cross the planet like rays of light through a transparent window.
Borexino takes advantage of the fact that from time to time a neutrino has a chance to interact with an electron. The project's detector consists of 100 tons of an ultrapure substance that produces a tiny flash of light if a neutrino strikes one of the instrument's electrons, Pocar said. About 2,000 highly sensitive cameras surround the detector and can record the intensity of flashes of light, revealing the amount of energy the neutrino carried when it entered the electron, he added.
While most of the previous solar neutrino experiments could only detect high energy neutrinos, Borexino can detect neutrinos with a wide range of energies, providing better insight into nuclear reactions inside the sun. the researchers said. The experiment has collected data for 10 years to provide the new very accurate image of emerging neutrinos from the sun.
Neutrinos are excellent sensors of the sun's interior, because almost intangible particles flow directly from the nucleus at the speed of light, Pocar said. Photons, or particles of light, on the other hand, are rapidly absorbed and then re-emitted by the atoms of the dense solar center. This sends the particles on a trajectory zigzagging out of the center of the sun, which can take thousands of years, Pocar said.
The results of Borexino will provide valuable data to scientists developing models of the sun. The snapshot could, for example, help determine the precise amounts of relatively heavy elements – such as carbon, nitrogen and oxygen – in the center of the sun, said Pocar, a problem that still leaves physicists of the solar scratching his head.
Originally published on Science live.
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