Sun contains more oxygen, silicon and neon than previously thought

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SUMMARY

Recent research by Ekaterina Magg, Maria Bergemann, and colleagues reveals that the Sun contains higher levels of oxygen, silicon, and neon than previously understood. Their study, published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, presents new solar models that align with current data on the Sun's structure, including sound waves and neutrinos, without invoking exotic physics. This work builds on historical findings regarding stellar spectra and chemical composition, notably contributions from scientists like Gustav Kirchhoff and Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin.

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Ekaterina Magg, Maria Bergemann and colleagues have published results of new calculations concerning the composition of the sun.
https://phys.org/news/2022-05-solar-spectrum-decade-long-controversy-sun.html

Stellar spectra contain conspicuous, sharp dark lines, first noticed by William Wollaston in 1802, famously rediscovered by Joseph von Fraunhofer in 1814, and identified as tell-tale signs indicating the presence of specific chemical elements by Gustav Kirchhoff and Robert Bunsen in the 1860s.

Pioneering work by the Indian astrophysicist Meghnad Saha in 1920 related the strength of those "absorption lines" to stellar temperature and chemical composition, providing the basis for our physical models of stars. Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin's realization that stars like our sun consist mainly of hydrogen and helium, with no more than trace amounts of heavier chemical elements, is based on that work.

Maria Bergemann (Max Planck Institute for Astronomy) says: "The new solar models based on our new chemical composition are more realistic than ever before: they produce a model of the sun that is consistent with all the information we have about the sun's present-day structure—sound waves, neutrinos, luminosity, and the sun's radius—without the need for non-standard, exotic physics in the solar interior."

As part of the work on her Ph.D. in that group, Ekaterina Magg set out to calculate in more detail the interaction of radiation matter in the solar photosphere.

The study, "Observational constraints on the origin of the elements. IV: The standard composition of the sun," is published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics. https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/full_html/2022/05/aa42971-21/aa42971-21.html
 
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I hope this doesn't re-energize the "Iron Sun" bunch.
 
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Vanadium 50 said:
the "Iron Sun" bunch.
Just "Googled" that; "strange xenon?" I thought Hoagland and the "Cydonuts" were at the pinnacle of the (d)evolutionary ladder; learn something new every day.
 
The main proponent - who I think can fairly (and non-judgementally) be described as "colorful" - was a past member here.

It is probably worth pointing out that the sun has a density of 1.4 g/cm3. Iron is 7.9 even if not compressed under pressure.
 

New theoretical model accounts for sun's rotation and magnetic field​

https://phys.org/news/2022-05-theoretical-accounts-sun-rotation-magnetic.html

We have abundance measurements of its chemical elements, but also measurements of its internal structure, like in the case of Earth thanks to seismology," explains Patrick Eggenberger, a researcher at the Department of astronomy of the UNIGE and first author of the study.

P. Eggenberger et al, The internal rotation of the Sun and its link to the solar Li and He surface abundances, Nature Astronomy (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41550-022-01677-0
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-022-01677-0
 
So sounds like these new abundances in general might resolve the solar metallicity discrepancy between asteroseismology and spectroscopic measurements? Raising the spectroscopic totals would help at least in the case of oxygen silicon and neon.