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The Italian Borexino detector confirmed a decades-old theory, finding the first ever evidence of a carbon-nitrogen-oxygen (CNO) cycle producing neutrinos in our sun. years on the star and sheds light on the “dominant channel in the universe for the combustion of hydrogen”.
The study, which was recently published in Nature, comes from the National Laboratories of Gran Sasso of the National Institute of Nuclear Physics. Borexino’s team previously studied the proton-proton chain, the primary way in which energy is produced in the Sun. The research was made possible by detecting neutrino fluxes originating from the proton-proton-chain cycle.
A similar effort went to the CNO study, with the researchers explaining that they measured the resulting neutrinos from this cycle, publishing the first experimental evidence that this “additional energy generation mechanism” is occurring on our star. The groundwork for this discovery was laid 30 years ago in 1990 and was preceded by more than a decade of research involving, among other things, the physics of the Sun.
The Borexino detector is the result of a scientific collaboration that included the involvement of the University of Milan and the University of Princeton. The ultra-sensitive detector was key to the results, according to the INFN, which explains that Borexino is very radiopure due to its onion-like design involving many layers.
As a result, the experiment is able to detect neutrinos crossing the Earth without interruption. The researchers say detecting the neutrinos that confirm the CNO cycle was “a complicated task,” but that it was ultimately made possible with the detector, software and many experts working together.
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