Astronomers have finally resolved the conflict between the internal structure of the sun as determined from solar oscillation and the structure derived from the fundamental theory of stellar evolution.
                          The interior of the Sun. Credit: Wikipedia Commons/kevinsongÂ
The distance between sun and earth seems close but it is still 93 million miles (150 million kilometres) away from Earth and we only have some narrow perspective.
Sun is the nearest star in our universe and we still don’t have proper information of it.Â
Sun is extremely hot and its atmosphere is even hotter, it constantly releases heat waves or particle at a blistering speed.
That’s the reason we still don’t know much about it and every time we found something its new information for us.Â
After a decade long conflict between the internal structure of the sun as determined from solar oscillations (helioseismology) and the structure derived from the fundamental theory of stellar evolution, which in turn relies on measurement of the present-day sun’s chemical composition.Â
From the new study and calculation of the physics of the Sun’s atmosphere show some new and interesting result.
Result showed that the sun contains much more oxygen, silicon, and neon than previously thought. This method of study shows more accurate estimates about the composition of the sun.Â
The tried-and-true method was spectral analysis for the determination of the sun’s composition. This method was used by astronomers when they routine check the spectra: the rainbow-like decomposition of light into its different wavelength.
Stellar spectra contain conspicuous, sharp dark lines and identified as the tell-take sign of presence of specific chemical elements.Â
Spectral analysis was introduced in 1802 by William Wollaston, and then further discovered and modified by several people by the years.
The information provided by the spectral analysis has been the foundation of century-long progress in our understanding of the composition and chemical structure of the universe and the different stars and exoplanets.Â
Â
That’s why it came as a surprise when the new study gives different data which don’t match with the data provided by the stellar analysis into the inner working of the sun.
The new study shows that the sun rhythmically expands and contracts in characteristics patterns, on time scales between seconds and hours.Â
The new helioseismology provides information about the interior of the Sun. It gae result which were at odds with the solar system standard models.
According to new theory, Sun’s matter sinks and rises again was considerably larger than the standard model predicted.Â
The speed of sound waves near the bottom of Sun, certain measurement of solar neutrinos, which is hard to detect, were also different form the standard model’s prediction. The amount of helium in the sun was also different from the standard model’s prediction.Â
Many Astronomers soon started called this a crisis “solar abundance crisis”.
They started questioning other theories like Did the sun maybe accrete some metal-poor gas during its planet forming phase? Is energy being transported by the notoriously non interacting dark matter particles?Â
The Newly published Study by Ekaterina Magg, Maria Bergemann and colleagues resolved these crises with their model by revisiting the spectral estimates of the Sun’s Chemical composition.
They assumed that locally, energy in each region of a star’s atmosphere has time to spread out and read a kind of equilibrium. This made the calculation easy by assigning each such region a temperature. Â
In this study they tracked all the chemical elements that are relevant to the current models of how star evolve over time, and also help in applying multiple independent methods to describe the chemical structure ad composition of the Sun.Â
Read More: – The Chemistry of the Sun: Resolving a Decade-Long Controversy About the Composition of Our Star
