John N. Bahcall

born 1934-present

In the 1960s Bahcall began to consider the emission of neutrinos from the Sun. One of the apparent early triumphs of nuclear physics was the light it threw on the internal workings of the Sun. Theorists such as Hans Bethe had proposed the existence of a number of cyclic fusion reactions producing vast amounts of energy, heavier elements, and a certain number of neutrinos. As neutrinos have a low probability of interacting with other particles, some solar neutrinos should be received at the Earth's surface. Bahcall calculated that one event per second for every 10³⁶ target atoms, one solar neutrino unit (SNU), should be detectable. The matter was put to the test by Ray Davis who used a detector consisting of a tank of 100,000 gallons of cleaning fluid in a one-mile-deep mine.
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