Our Sun was missing its silver. Scientists finally know what went wrong
&imwidth=600&imheight=450&format=webp&quality=medium "Our Sun was missing its silver. Scientists finally know what went wrong")
Sun contains many heavy elements and silver is one of them.
The Sun has 55 per cent more silver than scientists had calculated in the past. Previous studies showed that a lot of this element was missing from our star. But now, a study has found the missing silver in the Sun.
Our Sun, the planets, meteorites, and everything else in our solar system formed from the same cloud of gas and dust 4.6 billion years ago. Which means all of them should also have the same proportion of heavy elements. However, the Sun has been missing its silver, which has puzzled scientists for decades. Meteorites are time capsules, pristine pieces from billions of years ago that act as a benchmark. So everything they have, the Sun should also have.
But measurements showed that the Sun is missing a significant proportion of its silver as compared to meteorites. The difference was huge, which has led astronomers to do everything they can to solve this mystery.
This dilemma has finally been resolved. Sema Caliskan of Uppsala University has found the reason for the missing silver. Actually, the silver was never missing at all. The problem lay with how humans were measuring it.
How do scientists detect elements in sunlight?
To know which elements are present in a star, scientists check for their fingerprints. The atoms of each element absorb tiny amounts of light at very specific wavelengths when the sunlight passes through the outer layers of the Sun. They leave faint dark lines in the spectrum, and their pattern helps scientists figure out which elements are present along with their quantities. Also Read: NASA warns humans have underestimated the strongest solar storms - ‘There could be no upper limit’
How did Caliskan and his team find the silver in Sun
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To get as close as possible to the right number, it is important how the Sun's atmosphere is modelled. Caliskam and his team built a model that was far more realistic compared to the oversimplified versions. It accounted for the turbulent and dynamic nature of the Sun's outer layers. Atomic physics describes precisely how silver atoms interact with light and their surroundings. It also dealt with how that light itself affects the atoms that produce these lines. Also Read: Bad News for Musk: Earthly microbes could turn deadlier on Mars, spelling doom for astronauts
The model revealed what scientists had been missing all this time. The Sun has a lot of silver, 55 per cent more than previously thought. This finding has finally brought our star more in line with the meteorites. Caliskam's team now plans to study other stars to understand where and when elements like silver were born and what caused them to be scattered in the Milky Way.
