Nature 347, 536 - 539 (11 October 1990); doi:10.1038/347536a0

Evidence from solar seismology against non-standard solar-core models

Y. Elsworth^*, R. Howe^*, G. R. Isaak^*, C. P. McLeod^* & R. New^†

^*School of Physics and Space Research, University of Birmingham, Birmingham B15 2TT, UK
^†School of Science, Sheffield City Polytechnic, Sheffield SI 1WB, UK

GLOBAL oscillations of the Sun¹ have been used to test solar models², but modelling the oscillation frequencies to their measured accuracies of a few microhertz has proved difficult, mostly owing to ignorance of the structure of the Sun's outer layers³. The frequency separation between closely spaced modes in the acoustic spectrum is expected to depend more on core properties⁴, however, and thus to provide constraints on models of the solar core. Our observations combine data from a global network of observing stations, which reduces the masking effect of daily sidebands in the spectral analysis. Here we present precision measurements of fine structure and its variation with frequency. Our results agree with standard solar models^5–7, and seem to remove the need for significant mixing^8,9 or weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPS)^10,11 in the core, both of which have been advanced to explain the low measured flux of solar neutrinos^12,13. This suggests that the solar neutrino problem must be resolved within neutrino physics, not solar physics; neutrino oscillations and a finite neutrino mass form a possible explanation.

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