solar neutrino oscillation

A hot infant and a cold adult — the same neutron star looks different. Just born in a supernova explosion, it is scorching hot at tens of billions of degrees. But as time passes, it cools, contracting like cooling metal. For the star PSR J1012+5307, this transition means an almost twofold reduction in radius.

The Sun is not just a source of light but a giant laboratory where ghostly particles are born. Every second, billions of neutrinos fly through your body, barely noticing you. But inside the Sun, these particles behave differently: they change their type on the fly, like an actor playing three roles in a single play.

A spinning top whirls so fast it's about to fly apart. Add to it a super-strong magnet — one that, if placed on the Moon, would wipe data from every credit card on Earth. That's a magnetar: an ultra-dense remnant of an exploded star, a lump of matter where a teaspoon weighs as much as a mountain.

When a massive star dies, its core collapses, and a neutrino storm is born. These ghostly particles fly outward, changing their flavor along the way, like a chameleon changes color. This dance of flavors can either boost the explosion or, conversely, dampen it. But this dance has a choreographer — the density gradients of matter.

Two teams of radio telescopes pointed their antennas at two gas clouds: one at the very center of the Milky Way, the other in its quiet outskirts. Both clouds contain methanol molecules — an alcohol that acts as a tiny pendulum in space: it absorbs and emits radio waves at strictly defined frequencies.

The Sun doesn't just shine: it continuously emits streams of tiny particles, neutrinos. They are born in thermonuclear reactions in the core and pass through the star almost unhindered. But inside the Sun, there are magnetic fields that can influence these particles, like invisible corridors that slightly bend their path.

Our Sun emits streams of neutrinos — particles that barely interact with matter. Passing through the dense solar material, they change their type — scientists call this 'flavor.' It's like a voice that changes as it moves through a crowd: the thicker the crowd, the more it gets distorted.