Related papers: Neutron Repulsion
Curiously, our Universe was born in a low entropy state, with abundant free energy to power stars and life. The form that this free energy takes is usually thought to be gravitational: the Universe is almost perfectly smooth, and so can…
The neutrino is the most elusive particle that we know and for many years physicists doubted that neutrinos might never be revealed. Today we know and we reveal neutrinos produced by different astrophysical objects and by interactions of…
It is commonly accepted that a neutron star is produced, when a massive star exhausts its nuclear fuel and ends its life in a core-collapse supernova explosion. This scenario is confirmed by the detection of pulsars, which are believed to…
Solar X-ray and UV radiation (0.1-320 nm) received at Earth's surface is an important aspect of the circumstances under which life formed on Earth. The quantity that is received depends on two main variables: the emission of radiation by…
Confronting theoretical models with observations of thermal radiation emitted by neutron stars is one of the most important ways to understand the properties of both, superdense matter in the interiors of the neutron stars and dense…
The connection between nuclear fusion in the Sun's core and solar irradiance is obscured among other things by uncertainty over the mechanism of coronal heating. Data for solar wind density and velocity, sunspot number, and EUV flux suggest…
Neutrino emission drives neutron star cooling for the first several hundreds of years after its birth. Given the low energy ($\sim$ keV) nature of this process, one expects very few nonstandard particle physics contributions which could…
Neutron stars -- compact objects with masses similar to that of our Sun but radii comparable to the size of a city -- contain the densest form of matter in the universe that can be probed in terrestrial laboratories as well as in earth- and…
Despite the fact that the solar neutrino flux is now well-understood in the context of matter-affected neutrino mixing, we find that it is not yet possible to set a strong and model-independent bound on solar neutrino decays. If neutrinos…
Of all high-energy particles, only neutrinos can directly convey astronomical information from the edge of the universe---and from deep inside the most cataclysmic high-energy processes. Copiously produced in high-energy collisions,…
As recently advocated in \cite{Fischer:2018niu}, there is a fundamentally new mechanism for the axion production in the Sun and Earth. However, the role of very slow axions in previous studies were neglected because of its negligible…
Core-collapse supernovae are the terminal explosions of massive stars. After successive phases of nuclear fusion proceeding up to silicon burning, these stars form an iron core that is supported by electron degeneracy pressure. The core…
As the powerhouse of our solar system, the Sun's electromagnetic planetary influences appear contradictory. On the one hand, the Sun for aeons emitted radiation which was "just right" for life to evolve in our terrestrial Goldilocks zone,…
The main stages in the evolution of a neutron star, from its birth as a proto-neutron star, to its old age as a cold, catalyzed configuration, are described. A proto-neutron star is formed in the aftermath of a successful supernova…
The driving force behind the origin and evolution of life has been the thermodynamic imperative of increasing the entropy production of the biosphere through increasing the global solar photon dissipation rate. In the upper atmosphere of…
Superbursts are thought to be powered by the unstable ignition of a carbon-enriched layer formed from the burning of accreted hydrogen and helium. As shown by Cumming & Bildsten, the short recurrence time hinges on the crust being…
A theory of cosmic ray production within the solar system (not extra-galactic) is presented. The sun's time variable magnetic flux linkage makes the sun (as well, perhaps, as Jupiter) a natural, all-purpose, betatron storage ring, with…
Low-mass stars ($M\lesssim 2\,M_\odot$) ignite helium under degenerate conditions, eventually causing a nuclear run-away -- the helium flash. The alpha-capture process on $^{14}$N produces a large amount of $^{18}$F, whose subsequent decay…
The Sun encompasses planet Earth, supplies the heat that warms it, and even shakes it. The United Nation Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assumed that solar influence on our climate is limited to changes in solar irradiance…
Cosmic ray interactions in the solar atmosphere yield a flux of electron and muon neutrinos with energies greater than 10 GeV. We discuss the influence of neutrino oscillations on the event rates in water-based Cerenkov detectors due to…