🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Nov10.033543.21908@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU> crb7q@kelvin.seas.Virginia.EDU (Cameron Randale Bass) writes:

> 	  d) the solar neutrino 'problem'.  Is it a problem?  Do we believe 
>      the calculations.  Why do no two experiments seem to tell us the same 
>      thing?   Is something being left out of the 'standard model' of the 
>      sun?  How much *is* gallium chloride by the ton?
> 	  e) why does the Hubble 'constant' float all over the place.  It
>      almost seems like one could select a value at random and find very
>      good support for that value in astrophysical observations.

Sorry to be such a wet blanket all of the time, but...

I tend to think that the answer to these two questions is fairly
simple too: these measurements are both extremely difficult, and it
isn't terribly surprising that different measurements are giving us
different answers.  

(And in the solar neutrino measurements, it's worth remembering that
most of these experiments are testing a prediction of the "standard
solar model"---the flux of high-energy neutrinos---that is extremely
sensitive to the input assumptions.  I'll be more inclined to believe
that the problem is real when I see numbers I really believe from a
measurement of the low-energy neutrino flux.)
--
Matthew Austern                   Just keep yelling until you attract a
(510) 644-2618                    crowd, then a constituency, a movement, a
austern@lbl.bitnet                faction, an army!  If you don't have any
matt@physics.berkeley.edu         solutions, become a part of the problem!