Neutrinos in astrophysics

The amount of 4He synthesised in the "big bang" is sensitive to the early particle content and to the expansion rate. If there was indeed a "big bang", surprisingly strong conclusions can be drawn about the number of species of neutrinos, and about the possibility that such particles have non-zero rest mass. The dynamics of supernovae are sensitive to the det~ils of neutrino physics; such explosions would yield IO L-1053 ergs of -v IO Mev neutrinos, in a burst lasting a few milliseconds. Galactic nuclei, cosmic ray sources and other high energy cosmic phenomena could yield a low background of~ 10 Gev neutrinos.