[meteorite-list] Iron Sun Theory

From: almitt <almitt_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 10:00:11 2004
Message-ID: <3D447CC3.3AE7A119_at_kconline.com>

Hi Sterling, Tracy and all,

Here is a re-post of the article sent by Ron Baalke and it also has a url attached to
it. Sorry for taking up the band width but many have been curious and if you are like
me it is hard to find old messages or they are deleted. My best!

--AL

Office of Public Relations
University of Missouri-Rolla
Rolla, Missouri

Contact: Andrew Careaga
Phone: 573-341-4328
E-mail: acareaga_at_umr.edu

July 17, 2002

SUN IS MADE OF IRON, NOT HYDROGEN, PROFESSOR SAYS

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."

Manuel will present his the evidence for his assertion in his
poster presentation, "Why the Model of a Hydrogen-filled Sun is
Obsolete." His presentation will be Monday, July 21, at the
Meteoritical Society's 65th annual meeting on the University of
California-Los Angeles campus. Co-authors with Manuel are Cynthia
Bolon, a Ph.D. student in chemistry at UMR, and Aditya Katragada,
a UMR graduate student in chemistry.

Manuel says 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.

Iron and the heavy element known as xenon are at the center of
Manuel's efforts to change the way people think about the solar
system's origins.

Manuel believes 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.

Manuel has spent the better part of his 40-year scientific career
trying to convince others of his hypothesis. 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 from 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.

In January, Manuel presented similar findings at the American
Astronomical Society's meeting in Washington, D.C. His paper,
"The Origin of the Solar System with an Iron-rich Sun," and
other information about Manuel's research are available on the
Internet at http://web.umr.edu/~om/
Received on Sun 28 Jul 2002 07:22:44 PM PDT