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Missing Solar Neutrinos

Particle physicists refer to it as the "solar neutrino problem": They cannot find a set of elementary particles that are crucial to the basic models of astrophysics - and perhaps to understanding the universe. These elusive subatomic bits, which are released by the nuclear reactions within the sun and other stars, have neither mass nor electrical charge, and although they should in theory pass through the earth by the quadrillions every second, very sophisticated instruments have found but a fraction of the neutrinos that physicists expect.

Until last week there were three possible explanations for the missing neutrinos: The sun does not work the way it is supposed to, something has gone awry in the detection experiments or physicists do not understand neutrinos. A paper published in the journal Nature suggests that the sun is not to blame.

Physicists have long pictured the sun as a giant nuclear-fusion engine that gives off light and other particles, including neutrinos. But the scarcity of neutrinos cast doubt on the details of the model. Now, Georges Isaak, of the University of Birmingham, England, and colleagues have bolstered the standard model of the sun, using measurements of shock waves that periodically pulse, like a heartbeat, through the solar interior. The researchers compiled and analyzed worldwide observations of solar pulsing to conclude that the sun should indeed be producing as many neutrinos as theory predicts.

Russian strikeout. That leaves it to particle physicists to explain the missing neutrinos. Since 1968, scientists have used huge detectors to search for signs of these subatomic phantasms, catching on average less than one neutrino a day. Earlier this year, preliminary results from Baksan, Russia, site of the latest and theoretically the most sensitive detector, provoked great excitement among physicists: In its first four months, the Baksan detector saw not a single neutrino.

Unless more of these tiny particles can be measured, some of the most basic assumptions of physics may have to be re-evaluated. Under current theory, neutrinos come in three types, or flavors," only one of which, the electron neutrino, is thought to be produced by the sun. Two theorists, John Bahcall of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton and Hans Bethe of Cornell, have strengthened speculation that neutrinos change flavors on their way from the sun, thus escaping detection. The detector at Baksan was designed to search exclusively for electron neutrinos.

Physics will be turned on its ear if Bahcall and Bethe are right. Kenneth Lande of the University of Pennsylvania, a collaborator at Baksan, says neutrinos that transform flavors are behaving in ways never observed in particle accelerators, which simulate nuclear reactions at work in stars. Even more significant, to change flavors, these evanescent particles must, according to the laws of physics, have at least an infinitesimal amount of mass. This raises the possibility that the difficult-to-detect neutrinos filling space could actually be the "dark matter," the invisible mass astrophysicists believe makes up most of the universe but which they have until now been unable to find.

 
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