Message no. 1

From:	Adam Getchell <acgetche@****.UCDAVIS.EDU>
Subject:	Ices Ages and neutrinos (warning: little SR relevance)
Date:	Tue, 4 Apr 1995 14:56:31 -0700

On Tue, 4 Apr 1995, Robert Watkins wrote:

> Not atmospheric physics... nuclear physics. The Sun doesn't put out enough
> neutrinos for it to be burning at full power. It is known that this happens
> in cycles corresponding to the Ice Ages. The link is implied, but probably
> strong.

The neutrino thing, eh? Niven and Barnes took a theory of
explaining the neutrino gap. Thing is, I don't tend to believe it
because the overall energy balance of the sun is fairly stable (on a
geologic timescale, anyways) and any differences tend to get time
averaged out. Here's why:
A photon emitted from the proton-proton fusion cycle at the core
takes a million years, more or less, to reach the coronasphere of the
sun. This is due to the plasma density in the sun's core and the
constant absorbsion/re-emission interactions between the hydrogen plasma
and the photons. Irregularities of shorter duration than this time tend
to get smeared out and average, more or less.
Finally, the theory about the neutrinos I'd always heard had to
do with the neutrinos having a little bit of mass. There are three
different kinds of neutrinos, but we can only detect one kind (electron
neutrinos, if I recall correctly). So we count electron neutrinos,
multiply it by three, and then compare it with the neutrino balance
produced by that amount of proton-proton fusions. However, this assumes
a massless neutrino.
A neutrino with mass can transform into other types, the other
types we can't detect. Because we only detect 1/3 of the amount we
should, it is entirely possible that the other 2/3 's are being converted
into tau and mu neutrinos, respectively.


> --
> Robert Watkins bob@**.ntu.edu.au
> Real Programmers never work 9 to 5. If any real programmers
> are around at 9 am, it's because they were up all night.
> Finger me for my geek code
>

========================================================================
Adam Getchell "Invincibility is in oneself,
acgetche@****.engr.ucdavis.edu vulnerability in the opponent."
http://instruction.ucdavis.edu/html/getchell.html