Is Iron Causing All the Flares?

Dr. Oliver Manuel, a professor of nuclear chemistry, believes that iron, not hydrogen, is the sun’s most abundant element. In a paper accepted for publication in the Journal of Fusion Energy, Manuel asserts that the “standard solar model” -- which assumes that the sun’s core is made of hydrogen -- has led to misunderstandings of how such solar flares occur, as well as inaccurate views on the nature of global climate change.

Recent solar flares erupting on the sun’s surface have unleashed powerful geomagnetic storms -- gigantic clouds of highly charged particles that pose a threat to electric utilities, high-frequency radio communications, satellite navigation systems and television broadcasts. Continued turbulence on the sun will remain a concern for the coming days, according to space forecasters.

Manuel claims that hydrogen fusion creates some of the sun’s heat, as hydrogen -- the lightest of all elements -- moves to the sun’s surface. But most of the heat comes from the core of an exploded supernova that continues to generate energy within the iron-rich interior of the sun, Manuel says.

“We think that the solar system came from a single star, and the sun formed on a collapsed supernova core,” Manuel explains.

“The inner planets are made mostly of matter produced in the inner part of that star,” Manuel says, “and the outer planets of material that formed out of the outer layers of that star.”

Manuel’s paper, “Superfluidity in the Solar Interior: Implications for Solar Eruptions and Climate,” suggests that the conventional view of how magnetic fields in the sun’s interior -- the cause of solar flares and storms -- are formed is flawed. “The prevailing opinion in the solar physics community is that solar dynamos generate the sun’s magnetic fields by plasma flows in the outer part of the sun. ... The model of a hydrogen-filled sun offers few other options,” Manuel says.

Manuel offers another explanation, based on his assertion that the solar system was born catastrophically out of a supernova -- a theory that goes against the widely-held belief among astrophysicists that the sun and planets were formed 4.5 billion years ago in a relatively ambiguous cloud of interstellar dust. In his latest paper, Manuel posits that the changing fields are caused either by the magnetic field of the rotating neutron star at the core of the sun itself or by a reaction that converts the iron surrounding the neutron star into a superconductor. This reaction is called Bose-Einstein condensation.

While Manuel’s theory is seen as highly controversial by many in the scientific community, other researchers have confirmed that distant solar systems orbit stars that are rich in iron and other metals. Last summer, astronomer Debra Fischer at the University of California, Berkeley, presented her findings of a study of more than 750 stars at the International Astronomical Union meeting in Sydney, Australia. Fischer and her team determined that 20 percent of metal-rich stars have planets orbiting them.

Manuel believes Fischer’s research helps to confirm his 40-year effort to change the way people think about the solar system’s origins. He thinks a supernova rocked our area of the Milky Way galaxy some five billion years ago, giving birth to all the heavenly bodies that populate the solar system.

Analyses of meteorites reveal that all primordial helium is accompanied by “strange xenon,” he says, adding that both helium and strange xenon came from the outer layer of the supernova that created the solar system. Helium and strange xenon are also seen together in Jupiter.

Back in 1975, Manuel and another UMR researcher, Dr. Dwarka Das Sabu, first proposed that the solar system formed from the debris of a spinning star that exploded as a supernova. They based their claim on studies of meteorites and moon samples which showed traces of strange xenon. Data from NASA’s Galileo probe of Jupiter’s helium-rich atmosphere in 1996 reveals traces of strange xenon gases -- solid evidence against the conventional model of the solar system’s creation, Manuel says.

Manuel first began to develop the iron-rich sun theory in 1972. That year, Manual and his colleagues reported in the British journal Nature that the xenon found in primitive meteorites was a mixture of strange and normal xenon (Nature 240, 99-101). The strange xenon is enriched in isotopes that are made when a supernova explodes, the researchers reported, and could not be produced within meteorites.

Three years later, Manuel and Sabu found that all of the primordial helium in meteorites is trapped in the same sites that trapped strange xenon. Based on these findings, they concluded that the solar system formed directly from the debris of a single supernova, and the sun formed on the supernova’s collapsed core. Giant planets like Jupiter grew from material in the outer part of the supernova, while Earth and the inner planets formed out of material form the supernova’s interior. This is why the outer planets consist mostly of hydrogen, helium and other light elements, and the inner planets are made of heavier elements like iron, sulfur and silicon, Manuel says.

Strange xenon came from the helium-rich outer layers of the supernova, while normal xenon came from its interior. There was no helium in the interior because nuclear fusion reactions there changed the helium into the heavier elements, Manuel says.

Before we go calling people crackpots we might want to do a simple Google search for publications.
----------------------------- O. Manuel, The standard solar model versus experimental observations, Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Beyond Standard Model Physics - BEYOND 2002, in press (2002).

O. Manuel and A. Katragada, The Sun's origin and composition: Implications from meteorite studies, Proceedings of the 2002 Conference on Asteroids, Comets and Meteors, in press (2002).

O. Manuel, Cynthia Bolon and Max Zhong, Nuclear systematics: III. The source of solar luminosity, J. Radioanal. Nucl. Chem. 252, 3-7 (2002).

O. Manuel, C. Bolon, A. Katragada and M. Insall, Attraction and repulsion of nucleons: Sources of stellar energy, J. Fusion Energy 19, 93-98 (2000).

O. Manuel, C. Bolon & P. Jangam, "The sun's origin, composition and source of energy", in Lunar and Planetary Science XXIX, Abstract 1041, available as 1041-pdf from Lunar and Planetary Institute, Houston, TX (CD-ROM, 2001)

O. Manuel, "Isotope ratios: The key to elemental abundances and nuclear reactions in the Sun", in The Origins of the Elements in the Solar System: Implications of Post 1957 Observations, O. K. Manuel, Editor, Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, New York, NY, pp. 285-293 (2000).

O. Manuel, "Origin of elements in the solar system", in The Origins of the Elements in the Solar System: Implications of Post 1957 Observations, O. K. Manuel, Editor, Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, New York, NY, pp. 589-643 (2000).

O. K. Manuel, J. T. Lee, D. E. Ragland, J. M. D. MacElroy, Bin Li and Wilbur Brown, "Origin of the solar system and its elements", Journal of Radioanalytical and Nuclear Chemistry 238, nos. 1-2, 213-225 (1998).

O. Manuel, K. Windler, A. Nolte, L. Johannes, J. Zirbel and D. Ragland, "Strange xenon in Jupiter", Journal of Radioanalytical and Nuclear Chemistry 238, nos. 1-2, 119-121 (1998).

J. T. Lee, B. Li and O. K. Manuel, "On the signature of local element synthesis", Comments on Astrophysics 18, no. 6, 335-345 (1997).

J. T. Lee, B. Li and O. K. Manuel, "Terrestial type xenon in sulfides of the Allende meteorite", Geochemical Journal 30, 17-30 (1996).

O. K. Manuel, "Geochemical measurements of double-beta decay", Journal of Physics G: Nuclear and Particle Physics 17, S221-S229 (1991).

O. K. Manuel and G. Hwaung, " Solar abundance of the elements", Meteoritics 18, 209-222 (1983).

O. K. Manuel, "Heterogeneity of isotopic and elemental compositions in meteorites: Evidence of local synthesis of the elements ", Geokhimiya (12) 1776-1801 (1981) [In Russian].

L. L. Oliver, R. V. Ballad, J. F. Richardson and O. K. Manuel, "Isotopically anomalous tellurium in Allende: Another relic of local element synthesis", J. Inorg. Nucl. Chem. 43, 2207-2216 (1981).

R. V. Ballad, L. L. Oliver, R. G. Downing and O. K. Manuel, "Isotopes of tellurium, xenon and krypton in the Allende meteorite retain record of nucleosynthesis", Nature 277, 615-620 (1979).

O. K. Manuel and D. D. Sabu, "Strange xenon, extinct superheavy elements and the solar neutrino puzzle", Science 195, 208-209 (1977).

O. K. Manuel and D. D. Sabu, "Elemental and isotopic inhomogeneities in noble gases: The case for local synthesis of the chemical elements", Trans. Missouri Acad. Sci. 9, 104 122 (1975).

E. W. Hennecke and O. K. Manuel, and D. D. Sabu, "Double beta-decay of tellurium-128", Phys. Rev. 11, 1378-1384 (1975).

O. K. Manuel, E. W. Hennecke, and D. D. Sabu, "Xenon in carbonaceous chondrites", Nature Phys. Sci. 240, 99-101 (1972).

M. S. Boulos and O. K. Manuel, "The xenon record of extinct radioactivities in the Earth," Science 174, 1334-1336 (1971).

I said normal state.

High temps are required to melt. Normal state is what it is. The normal space conditions. Usually in the very cold category. Iron would be a solid and likely a dust. It cannot be compressed as a gas can and it is not known to react with anything but oxygen.

That is what I meant. Great planetary building material but not likely to start a fusion or fission reaction.

Kind of a nutty theory IMO. We know a great deal about the sun. not enough mind you, but a great deal of information has been gathered, to include much data about composition. Not theory, but data. This article flies in the face of everything we know.

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