A disk of planet-forming material swirls around a young star in an artist's conception. Sunlike stars known to have planets have relatively little lithium on their surfaces, according to a November 2009 study that could offer a new tool in the hunt for planets beyond our solar system. [Picture courtesy ESO/L. Calcada]
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I prefer latinum.
Maybe the media used it all.
Mystery of the Missing Sunspots, Solved?(No, not Rove)
NASA | June 17, 2009 | Dr. Tony Phillips
Posted on 06/17/2009 4:57:29 PM PDT by decimon
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/2274015/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1294934/posts?page=49#49
Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin: Astronomer And Astrophysicist
1900-1980
by Owen Gingerich
Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
http://www.harvardsquarelibrary.org/unitarians/payne2.html
In a short chapter entitled “The Relative Abundance of the Elements” there is a ticking time bomb. This is the extremely high abundance of hydrogen and helium that had come out under certain assumptions in the analysis. Although we know today that this high abundance is real, at the time it produced an apparent anomaly with respect to the assumed homogeneity of the solar system. After all, when the earth is taken as a whole, it must be predominately iron in order to account for its high mean density, and this is supported by the fact that meteorites are largely iron and by the appearance of the solar spectrum itself, which shows more lines of iron than any other element. The very important principle of uniformity of nature seemed at stake. As Cecilia herself argued in her thesis, “If . . . the earth originated from the surface layers of the sun, the percentage composition of the whole earth should resemble the composition of the solar (and therefore of a typical stellar) atmosphere. . . . Considering the possibility of atomic segregation both in the earth and in the star, it appears likely that the earth’s crust is representative of the stellar atmosphere.”21 So in her final table of abundances, she omitted hydrogen and helium.
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Is lithium a good investment now?
