Borexino Collaboration receives Giuseppe and Vanna Cocconi Prize
The European Physical Society is awarding this year's Giuseppe and Vanna Cocconi Prize to the Borexino Collaboration. The Collaboration receives the prize for its ground-breaking observation of solar neutrinos, which provided unique and comprehensive insights into the Sun as a nuclear fusion engine.
Scientists at the Borexino Collaboration have been conducting research on solar neutrinos for 14 years. With the observatory for the nearly unobservable "ghost particles" located 1400 meters below the Earth's surface in the Gran Sasso Massif near Rome, the researchers have found missing puzzle pieces in the mechanism of solar nuclear fusion several times.
They receive special recognition from the Giuseppe and Vanna Cocconi Prize for their extraordinary findings on two different processes powering our star: In 2018, they published the most comprehensive analysis to date of neutrinos from the nuclear fusion processes inside the Sun, in particular more accurate and significant data from the various steps of the so-called "pp process." A few months ago, researchers succeeded in demonstrating for the first time the existence of the so-called CNO fusion cycle in nature: They discovered solar neutrinos originating from this process.
An interview with Prof. Livia Ludhova, member of JARA-FAME, is available on the website of Forschungszentrum Jülich: https://www.fz-juelich.de/portal/EN/Press/PressReleases/2021/2021-05-31-borexino/_node.html
10 Jahre Borexino-Daten: Beispielloser Einblick in Fusionsreaktor der Sonne