The sun is moslty made of Iron, not hydrogen!

Newswise.com

For years, scientists have assumed that the sun is an enormous mass of hydrogen. But in a poster presentation to be delivered July 21-26 at the Meteoritical Society's annual meeting in Los Angeles, Dr. Oliver Manuel says iron, not hydrogen, is the sun's most abundant element.

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.

"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." Continued

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[edit on 15/8/05 by JAK]

Interesting theory. The planets are very small in mass compared to the sun (and the much larger pre-supernova sun that would have preceded it), so where would the rest of the mass have gone? I guess I would not expect us to be still living in a nebula anymore after 5 billion years... should be enough time for something to happen to all that exploded nebuma mass that didn't become planets.

I highly doubt it, mostly because of Stokiomtery (sp) in chemistry you learn that every element gives off a specific wavelength of light. Astronomers and scientist use spectromoters to decode the wavelength and then compare it to the elements to fing out teh compisiton of something.

For instance... In cars you can ow buy tungesgen (sp) head lights, I'm sure you have seen tehm before tehy are teh really bright white lights. where as older cars have a more so yellow color. that is because of the element of the filiment that makes up the light.

That is also why nebulas are all kinds of perty colors... because they are various elements made up by stars gone super nova ( planetary nebulas that is) and in the core of teh star it produced many different elements by fussion.

I highly doubt that this theory will hold. A basic college chemistry student could do a simple experiment and deduce the suns composition which is not Iron but hydrogen, helium, and carbon.

to asawa...

The sun is a 3rd generation star....

After the big bang there was only hydrogen, so the verry first stars formed from hydrogen only. WHen these stars went superova they spread out many new elements but mostly your lighter elements on the perodic table. THe Hydrogen stars could not sustain fusion long enough to creat super heavy elements like lead iron nickle etc... The second generation stars formd mostly of Hydrogen Heilum carbon and the lighter elements. Second generations tars would have planets but stil tehy would be mostly gas planets and few rocky planets. However because these stars began their life with a good supply of heavy elements in them they could fuse heiver elements in their cores. WHen they went super nova then we had the right stuff to make heavy rocky planets.

Our sun fromed from the remnants of second generation stars. It absorbed alot of the materail and alot of it collectet into the solarsystem as planets and planet toids. When the sun gained the status of fusion then the massive power of the solar winds kicked allt he debris out of the proto system nebula. Alot of it now resides in the Ort Cloud arough our solar system.

Much of this is still theory but it is the best explanation I can give you

Thanks Mizar, that's a good explanation. I never thought of the sun as a 3rd generation star before, but that would help explain why about 10 billion years of the universe's existence passed by before the sun finally formed.

(Wow, smart people here! I like this place.)

How do we know what the sun is made of unless we have taken sample's from it?

Originally posted by menguard
How do we know what the sun is made of unless we have taken sample's from it?

Different elements emmit different wavelengths of light, that's how we know.

Spectrographs from the sun only tell us what the surface layers are composed of, not the core -- so I guess it could have a solid iron interior. But that said, I find this theory difficult to believe, I think the sun probably formed from the nebular remains of a supernova and has a thermonuclear hydrogen/helium core as generally accepted.

There's also some physics involved. A star the size of the sun is too small to fuse silicon nuclei into iron, iron is also at a critical point because no further fusion is possible from there in nature.

These explain the currently accepted models of stellar dynamics.

www.vectorsite.net...
www.astro.psu.edu...

berglion,

I think they're saying that the Sun isn't actually forming iron now, but formed around the iron core of a previous star that went supernova...

Well, first off, as it's 3 years old, and we've heard nothing like this since, I'm inclined to think it's a dud. I'm also inclined to think it's a dud for the obvious reasons.

berglion is absolutely right, if there was Iron there we'd have about 8 minutes left to enjoy the sun.

Originally posted by Amorymeltzer

berglion is absolutely right, if there was Iron there we'd have about 8 minutes left to enjoy the sun.

This is interesting ... the accepted theory is that if there is a massive iron core then we'll have 8 minutes, but if the density and pressure of the sun is variable throughout it's mass, there could be SOME iron, just not a solid core of it that reaches a critical point.

In a similar vein, how does our Earth have the distributions of atoms heavier than iron (such as uranium) that it does? Is it merely a product of trapped atoms from some previous supernovae, or is it an early stage planetary evolution phase when things were alot hotter and Earth was fusing atoms, only then it cooled to a planet instead of becoming a sun, etc.

Originally posted by grad_student
In a similar vein, how does our Earth have the distributions of atoms heavier than iron (such as uranium) that it does? Is it merely a product of trapped atoms from some previous supernovae, or is it an early stage planetary evolution phase when things were alot hotter and Earth was fusing atoms, only then it cooled to a planet instead of becoming a sun, etc.

The former. It's really easy for that to happen, and pretty hard for Earth to be a (very very very) small start and then become a planet. It just wouldn't work, especially given all the other planets.