For more than 20 years it has been clear that fewer solar neutrinos are being detected at the Earth than is predicted by the theory of the Sun's interior. Now a physicist in Geneva is claiming that the 'solar neutrino problem' may never have existed.
Douglas Morrison of CERN, the European laboratory for particle physics, says the latest models of the way in which the Sun works predict solar neutrino fluxes which are almost consistent with the latest observations. Morrison presented his paper recently at the fourth meeting of 'Rencontres de Blois on Particle Astrophysics'.
The conventional wisdom that there is a solar neutrino problem was spelt out recently by John Bahcall of Princeton University ('High noon for solar neutrinos', New Scientist, 15 August). Standard solar models predict both the temperature at the Sun's core and the number of neutrinos generated by the nuclear reactions there. A pioneering solar neutrino ...
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