Solar flares: is iron-rich sun the cause? (Forwarded)

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10/30/2003

Solar flares: is iron-rich sun the cause?

The spate of solar storms to hit Earth in recent days may be caused by the sun's
iron-rich interior, says a UMR researcher who theorizes that the sun's core is
made of iron rather than hydrogen.

Dr. Oliver Manuel, a professor of nuclear chemistry, believes that iron, not
hydrogen, is the sun's most abundant element. In a paper accepted for
publication in the Journal of Fusion Energy, Manuel asserts that the "standard
solar model" -- which assumes that the sun's core is made of hydrogen -- has led
to misunderstandings of how such solar flares occur, as well as inaccurate views
on the nature of global climate change.

Recent solar flares erupting on the sun's surface have unleashed powerful
geomagnetic storms -- gigantic clouds of highly charged particles that pose a
threat to electric utilities, high-frequency radio communications, satellite
navigation systems and television broadcasts. Continued turbulence on the sun
will remain a concern for the coming days, according to space forecasters.

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 explains.

"The inner planets are made mostly of matter produced in the inner part of that
star," Manuel says, "and the outer planets of material that formed out of the
outer layers of that star."

Manuel's paper, "Superfluidity in the Solar Interior: Implications for Solar
Eruptions and Climate," suggests that the conventional view of how magnetic
fields in the sun's interior -- the cause of solar flares and storms -- are
formed is flawed. "The prevailing opinion in the solar physics community is that
solar dynamos generate the sun's magnetic fields by plasma flows in the outer
part of the sun. ... The model of a hydrogen-filled sun offers few other
options," Manuel says.

Manuel offers another explanation, based on his assertion that 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. In
his latest paper, Manuel posits that the changing fields are caused either by
the magnetic field of the rotating neutron star at the core of the sun itself or
by a reaction that converts the iron surrounding the neutron star into a
superconductor. This reaction is called Bose-Einstein condensation.

While Manuel's theory is seen as highly controversial by many in the scientific
community, other researchers have confirmed that distant solar systems orbit
stars that are rich in iron and other metals. Last summer, astronomer Debra
Fischer at the University of California, Berkeley, presented her findings of a
study of more than 750 stars at the International Astronomical Union meeting in
Sydney, Australia. Fischer and her team determined that 20 percent of metal-rich
stars have planets orbiting them.

Manuel believes Fischer's research helps to confirm his 40-year effort to change
the way people think about the solar system's origins. He thinks 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.

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.

Manuel first began to develop the iron-rich sun theory in 1972. That year,
Manual and his colleagues reported in the British journal Nature that the xenon
found in primitive meteorites was a mixture of strange and normal xenon (Nature
240, 99-101). The strange xenon is enriched in isotopes that are made when a
supernova explodes, the researchers reported, and could not be produced within
meteorites.

Three years later, Manuel and Sabu found that all of the primordial helium in
meteorites is trapped in the same sites that trapped strange xenon. 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. Giant planets like Jupiter grew from material in the outer part of the
supernova, while Earth and the inner planets formed out of material form the
supernova's interior. 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.

Strange xenon came from the helium-rich outer layers of the supernova, while
normal xenon came from its interior. There was no helium in the interior because
nuclear fusion reactions there changed the helium into the heavier elements,
Manuel says.

While Manuel's theory is seen as highly controversial by many in
the scientific community, other researchers have confirmed that
distant solar systems orbit stars that are rich in iron and other
metals. Last summer, astronomer Debra Fischer at the University of
California, Berkeley, presented her findings of a study of more
than 750 stars at the International Astronomical Union meeting in
Sydney, Australia. Fischer and her team determined that 20 percent
of metal-rich stars have planets orbiting them.

Manuel believes Fischer's research helps to confirm his 40-year
effort to change the way people think about the solar system's
origins. He thinks 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.

This is a bit of a stretch. The cosmic abundance ratio of iron to
hydrogen is roughly 1E-5. In other words, as determined from the
Sun's photosphere and meteorites, there are roughly 100,000 H atoms
for every Fe atom. The "metal-rich" stars have a few times more
iron than does the Sun, so "only" 50,000 H atoms per Fe atom.

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