h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The Sudbury Neutrino Observatory in Ontario solved the mystery of the missing solar neutrinos at about the time this article was written.

In the eight minutes it takes for neutrinos originating at the core of our Sun to reach neutrino detectors such as the SNO on Earth, they undergo an oscillation that means that two types of neutrino cannot interact with the chlorine atoms in Ray Davis' original perchloroethane neutrino detector (where they must convert the chlorine to argon in order to be detected).

As a result of this, we know the age of our Sun to such a high degree of accuracy, it is possible in this century to predict the exact day that our Sun will begin to collapse and then expand to engulf the inner solar system as a red giant.

The fusion of hydrogen to helium in a star such as our Sun does not end the fusion process. Like other stars of the main sequence, it is possible for atoms to fuse up until it becomes iron nuclei, but with diminishing returns in terms of energy output (see "binding energy vs. number of nucleons curve" in nuclear physics).

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