The real cause of the flares.
Posted on 11/19/2003 9:15:52 AM PST by LibWhacker
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.
Yeah, and the Earth is a planet, and not a nuclear reaction.
If the solar flare was comprised of iron, don't ya think we would know? Or at least be suspicious. Or have some data to indicate iron content, or something?
BTW, I used to work for some crackpots at Harvard. Every one of them had a bibliography that was more impressive than Manuel's, ito, length, quality of the journals that published them, etc. But their "science" was bull. They were fudgers. That's why I quit.
When something I read flies in the face of what I read previously and know as fact, then I will challenge it.
If you are a dirt doctor, then challenge this wacko and not me.
What I know about the sun came from NOAA. I consider their data to be true.
BTW, I have used plasma cutters, welders and worked for a steel foundry. I know what iron can and can't do.
There is no such thing as iron gas as far as I know. It forms compounds and alloys, or it oxidizes and is destroyed or turns into something else. It cannot exist as a gas.
I don't know squat about this, but I'm prettty sure that whatever is at the core of the sun probably is not "in a normal state."
Oh for cryin out loud!
I made that statement to question how that much iron got collected in one place.
Hydrogen is a gas, and compresses easily and moves about freely.
Iron does not and is not present in the large amounts like hydrogen is.
We have some pretty good ideas how stars are formed. Iron has not been mentioned very much.
Right, but not first-hand. He seems to be just an ordinary scientist who has put forth a speculation. All scientists do that, play what-if, just not in public. For science to exist at all it is vitally important that published articles be beyond reproach. Even if it is scribbled on the bottom of a pizza box at a physics conference, it better be good, or you'll be remembered as somewhat halfbaked.
The real cause of the flares.
Where there's smoke, there's fire. Maybe that's not always true, but it works 95% of the time and there is so much to do one can't waste time trying to find the 1 in 20. If someone hasn't been a stickler for the rules of doing science, move on.
Its Editorial Staff appears to be made up of some folks who are at least conversant with the topic.
It doesn't appear to be devoted to a whole lot of really hard-core stuff.
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