Urca process of neutrino cooling
Proceso Urca de enfriamiento por neutrinos
- Date
- 1940-1941 · confidence high
- Place
- George Washington University, Washington D.C., United States
- Credited to
- Mário Schenberg and George Gamow
- Field
- Cosmos & Earth
What was discovered
A mechanism by which nuclei capture electrons and emit neutrinos, then decay in a cycle that rapidly cools a star and may trigger its collapse. Gamow named it after a Rio de Janeiro casino.
Schenberg, a Brazilian physicist, worked with Gamow during his stay in Washington; later theory showed the original process differs from the one dominant in present-day neutron stars, though the name remains.
What it led to
- Theory of neutron star cooling
- Early neutrino models of supernovae
- The Schenberg–Chandrasekhar limit of 1942