The first experiment to successfully detect cosmic neutrinos was Ray Davis's chlorine experiment, in which neutrinos were detected by observing the conversion of chlorine nuclei to radioactive argon in a large tank of perchloroethylene. This was a reaction channel expected for neutrinos, but since only the number of argon decays was counted, it did not give any directional information, such as where the neutrinos came from. The experiment found about 1/3 as many neutrinos as were predicted by the standard solar model of the time, and this problem became known as the solar neutrino problem.