For the first time ever, physicists have spotted rare, ghostly particles produced by a weird kind of fusion inside the sun.
有史以來，物理學家們於太陽內部，已經首度發現，由一種奇特核聚變產生的罕見幽靈般粒子。
The particles, called CNO-produced neutrinos, traveled from the sun to a detector buried deep beneath a mountain in Italy. This discovery brings humans one step closer to understanding the fiery nuclear reactions fueling our home star.
此些被稱為CNO產生的中微子粒子，從太陽行進到深埋於，意大利一處山底下的探測器。此發現使人們更進一步瞭解，為咱們主恆星(太陽)加燃料的猛烈核反應。
"With this outcome," physicist Gioacchino Ranucci, a physicist at Italy's National Institute for Nuclear Physics in Milan, told Live Science. "Borexino has completely unraveled the two processes powering the sun."
意大利國家核物理研究所(位於米蘭)的物理學家，Gioacchino Ranucci告訴(科學新聞網站)Live Science：「隨著此成果，Borexino(一項研究低能(sub-MeV：低於百萬電子伏特)太陽中微子的粒子物理實驗)已經完全揭露了，為太陽提供能量的兩種過程。」
Two types of nuclear fusion reactions occur in the sun's core. The first, and most common, is proton-proton fusion, where protons fuse to transform hydrogen into helium. Scientists predict such reactions generate 99% of the sun's energy. Rarely, nuclear fusion occurs via a six-step process, called the CNO cycle, where hydrogen is fused to helium using carbon (C), nitrogen (N), and oxygen (O).
在太陽核心中，發生兩種核聚變反應。第一種且最常見的是質子融合，這是將氫轉化成氦的質子-質子核聚變。科學家們預測，這種反應產生99％的太陽能量。罕見的是，使用碳(C)、氮(N)及氧(O)，經由被稱為CNO循環六個步驟之過程，發生氫被融合成氦的核聚變。
Proton-proton fusion and the CNO-cycle create different types of neutrinos, subatomic particles that are nearly massless and can pass through ordinary matter without a hint of their presence, at least most of the time. Physicists routinely detect neutrinos created during the proton-proton process.
質子-質子核聚變及CNO循環產生幾乎無質量，且至少在大多數情況，能沒有其存在跡象下，通過普通物質的不同類型中微子。物理學家們例行地發現，在質子-質子核聚變過程中，產生的中微子。
However, on June 23, at the Neutrino 2020 Virtual Meeting, researchers from Italy's Borexino detector announced that they had detected CNO-produced solar neutrinos for the very first time.
不過，在2020年6月23日的中微子2020虛擬會議中，來自意大利Borexino探測器的研究人員們宣布，他們已經首度發現CNO產生的太陽中微子。
The underground Borexino Experiment, at the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso, near the town of L'Aquila, Italy, was designed to study these extremely rare neutrino interactions.
在意大利格蘭薩索國家實驗室(位於靠近意大利拉奎拉鎮)的地下Borexino實驗，旨在研究這些極度罕見中微子的交互作用。
The Borexino detector consists of a tank approximately 60 feet (18 meters) tall that contains 280 tons (254 metric tons) of scintillating liquid — which flashes light when electrons in the liquid interact with a neutrino. A bright flash, which indicates higher energy, is more likely to be from CNO-produced neutrinos.
Borexino探測器由一個具有280噸(254公噸)，當液體中的電子與中微子交互作用時，會發出閃爍光之閃爍液，高大約60英尺(18米)的槽組成。顯示較高能量的明亮閃爍，很可能是來自CNO產生的中微子。
Buried deep underground and cocooned in a water tank, Borexino's internal tank is lined with sensitive detectors that are extremely isolated from background radiation from cosmic rays present at Earth's surface. Without this shielding, other signals would drown out the rare signals coming from CNO neutrinos.
深埋於地下且密封於水槽中，Borexino的內槽是以，極度與來自存在於地表之宇宙射線背景輻射被隔離的靈敏探測器作為襯裡。如果沒有此屏蔽，其他信號會淹沒來自CNO中微子的罕見信號。
Ranucci also credits the "unprecedented purity" of the scintillating liquid with much of the experiment's success.
Ranucci也將該實驗的大部分成功，歸功於“前所未有之純度”的閃爍液。
Comparing the observed CNO neutrino observation with the number of observed proton-proton neutrinos will help reveal how much of the sun is made up of elements heavier than hydrogen such as carbon, nitrogen and oxygen.
將觀測到之CNO中微子觀測結果與觀測到之質子-質子的中微子數量進行比較，將有助於揭露，太陽有多少是由比氫重的元素(諸如碳、氮及氧)組成。
The current results, although not yet peer-reviewed and published in a scientific journal, showed a significance greater than 5 sigma with a greater than 99% confidence level, meaning there is just a 1 in 3.5 million chance that the signal was produced by random fluctuations, rather than the CNO process.
雖然尚未經過同行評審及發表於科學期刊，不過目前的研究結果顯示了，一種具有置信度大於99%之大於(統計分析上)5Σ的顯著性。這意味著，只有350萬分之一的可能性，信號是由隨機波動產生的，而不是CNO過程。
The Borexino international collaboration is made up of researchers from Italy, France, Germany, Poland, Russia, and three universities from the United States, Princeton, Virginia Tech and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
Borexino國際共同研究團隊是由，來自意大利、法國、德國、波蘭、俄羅斯，及美國普林斯頓、維吉尼亞理工與馬薩諸塞大學阿默斯特分校等三所大學的研究人員組成。
原文網址：https://www.space.com/rare-solar-cno-neutrinos-detected.html#xenforo-comments-32566
翻譯：許東榮
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