Solar coreThe core of the Sun is considered to extend from the center to about 0.2 to 0.25 of solar radius (). It is the hottest part of the Sun and of the Solar System. It has a density of 150 g/cm3 at the center, and a temperature of 15 million kelvins (15 million degrees Celsius, 27 million degrees Fahrenheit). The core is made of hot, dense plasma (ions and electrons), at a pressure estimated at 265 billion bar (3.84 trillion psi or 26.5 petapascals (PPa)) at the center.
Standard solar modelThe standard solar model (SSM) is a mathematical treatment of the Sun as a spherical ball of gas (in varying states of ionisation, with the hydrogen in the deep interior being a completely ionised plasma). This model, technically the spherically symmetric quasi-static model of a star, has stellar structure described by several differential equations derived from basic physical principles. The model is constrained by boundary conditions, namely the luminosity, radius, age and composition of the Sun, which are well determined.
Neutrino detectorA neutrino detector is a physics apparatus which is designed to study neutrinos. Because neutrinos only weakly interact with other particles of matter, neutrino detectors must be very large to detect a significant number of neutrinos. Neutrino detectors are often built underground, to isolate the detector from cosmic rays and other background radiation. The field of neutrino astronomy is still very much in its infancy – the only confirmed extraterrestrial sources are the Sun and the supernova 1987A in the nearby Large Magellanic Cloud.
Mikheyev–Smirnov–Wolfenstein effectThe Mikheyev–Smirnov–Wolfenstein effect (often referred to as the matter effect) is a particle physics process which modifies neutrino oscillations in matter of varying density. The MSW effect is broadly analogous to the differential retardation of sound waves in density-variable media, however it also involves the propagation dynamics of three separate quantum fields which experience distortion. In free space, the separate rates of neutrino eigenstates lead to standard neutrino flavor oscillation.
Neutrino oscillationNeutrino oscillation is a quantum mechanical phenomenon in which a neutrino created with a specific lepton family number ("lepton flavor": electron, muon, or tau) can later be measured to have a different lepton family number. The probability of measuring a particular flavor for a neutrino varies between three known states, as it propagates through space. First predicted by Bruno Pontecorvo in 1957, neutrino oscillation has since been observed by a multitude of experiments in several different contexts.
