Do We Accurately Know the Formation of Solar 8B?

Abstract

A detailed examination of current data on S_17 (as opposed to an examination of S_17(0) only) excludes quoting S_17(0) with sufficiently small uncertainty. In contrast to suggestions that S_17(0) is now known with the accuracy of \pm 3%, the exact value of S_17(0) is dependent on the choice of the data and the choice of theory used for extrapolation. In addition recent high precision results (including the Seattle data) on S_17 which are in good agreement, still differ on the measured slopes, as do theoretical models that predict different d-wave contribution, precluding an accurate extrapolation to zero energy of the consistent data. Using a common extrapolation of only the consistent high precision data, suggests a value of S_17(0) = 21.2 \pm 0.5 eV-b, but a value equal to or smaller than 19.0 eV-b can not be excluded due to the uncertainty in the extrapolation, leading to an additional error of +0.0 -3.0 eV-b. This (unacceptable) situation must be cleared by future experiments.