Posted on 07/17/2002 11:33:32 PM PDT by per loin
Source: | University Of Missouri-Rolla (http://www.umr.edu) | ||
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Date: | Posted 7/17/2002 |
The Sun: A Great Ball Of Iron? For years, scientists have assumed that the sun is an enormous mass of hydrogen. But in a paper presented before the American Astronomical Society, Dr. Oliver Manuel, a professor of nuclear chemistry at UMR, says iron, not hydrogen, is the sun's most abundant element. 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 says. "The inner planets are made mostly of matter produced in the inner part of that star, and the outer planets of material form the outer layers of that star."
Manuel's theory that the solar system was born catastrophically out of a supernova 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. Iron and the heavy element known as xenon are at the center of Manuel's efforts to change the way people think about the solar system's origins. Born of a supernova Manuel believes 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. Manuel has spent the better part of his 40-year scientific career trying to convince others of his hypothesis. 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. Editor's Note: The original news release can be found at http://web.umr.edu/~newsinfo/ironsun.html
As the fusion process starts running out of the lighter elements, and begins to burn iron, the star changes dramatically.
Supernova in the large stars, red giant in the smaller.
So I find it hard to believe that our star has any appreciable percentage of iron at this time.
Shouldn't spectrography be able clarify the issue?
Wouldn't it would change all sorts of assumptions about the mass of the Sun?
Bwahaha! Thanks dude... I blocked out all seventeen or so of my chem classes from my memory a long time ago... (Chem major in college. Gawd knows why. Hated everything but p-chem.)
Sun Is Mostly Iron, Not Hydrogen, Professor Says[Dr. Oliver] Manuel, a professor of nuclear chemistry at the University of Missouri-Rolla, 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... Manuel says 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. Iron and the heavy element known as xenon are at the center of Manuel's efforts to change the way people think about the solar system's origins... 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... 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... The strange xenon is enriched in isotopes that are made when a supernova explodes, the researchers reported, and could not be produced within meteorites... 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... 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.
Science News
January 9, 2002
University Of Missouri-Rolla
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‘Iron Sun’ is not a rock band, but a key to how stars transmit energy
by Sandia National Laboratories
https://phys.org/news/2015-01-iron-sun-band-key-stars.html
Astronomy Picture of the Day
2001 September 29
The Iron Sun
Credit: SOHO - EIT Consortium, ESA, NASA
Explanation: The ultraviolet light emitted by eleven times ionized iron at temperatures over 2 million degrees Farenheit was used to record the above picture of the Sun on September 22, the date of the autumnal equinox. The image was made by the EIT camera onboard the SOHO spacecraft, a space observatory which can continuously observe the Sun. Eleven times ionized iron is atomic iron with eleven of its electrons stripped away. Here the electrons are stripped by the frantic collisions with other atoms and electrons which occur at the extreme temperatures in the Solar Corona. Since electrons are negatively charged, the resulting ionized iron atom is highly positively charged. Astronomer’s “shorthand” for eleven times ionized iron is written “Fe XII”, the chemical symbol for iron followed by a Roman numeral 12 (Fe I is neutral iron).
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap010929.html
https://skyimagelab.com/products/blue-iron-sun
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