Does the Sun still shine

摘要

The astrophysical S factor for the (sup 7)Be(p, (gamma))(sup 8)B reaction atthreshold is investigated using simple models to determine the model dependence in the extrapolation of the laboratory data to the region of astrophysical interest near 20 keV. We find that the energy dependence below 400 keV is largely well understood in terms of the Coulomb interaction and constrained by the data for the elastic scattering of low-energy neutrons from (sup 7)Li.