FATS LIES ABOUT PHYSICS

Today, Fats Limbaugh made fun of a physics discovery that he alleged every 1st grader already knew. In fact, this was a significant advance in our knowledge of both neutrinos and how stars work. From the article Fats cited:

"In making these first direct measurements of low-energy neutrinos coming from the sun, Borexino represents a convergence of our present understanding of neutrino properties and the physics of solar energy generation," said Brad Keister, program director for nuclear physics in NSF's mathematical and physical sciences directorate.

Researchers have long known that neutrinos were generated by fusion reactions in the sun's core, but the model predicted more neutrinos than had been seen.

Physicists later realized that the explanation might lie in a new understanding of neutrinos, rather than a revised understanding of the reactions in the sun's core. In recent years, physicists have theorized that neutrinos produced in the sun transform back and forth, or oscillate, into other "flavors" of neutrinos. Earlier measurements of higher-energy neutrinos have shown that the solar models appear to be correct, but due to oscillations, only a fraction of the neutrinos with the original flavor is detected. "We've learned a lot from higher energy neutrinos in recent years," said Keister. "But the issue has remained that we haven't looked directly at the energies where most of the neutrinos have been produced." Now, the Borexino measurement of low-energy neutrinos confirms this picture, including the expected neutrino deficit.