[RightWhale]

That's a whole different thing. It's not easy to get computer time. But if you have funding from outside sources, well, that's the point of research institutes, you may develop models even if they burn a few milliseconds of CPU time. In fact, one should as a basic norm.

[Arkinsaw]

An Iron Core in the Sun?
In 1963, Rouse found that his models fit the available information better if he used a different elemental composition for the Sun. In particular, the models worked well when Rouse assumed a small core region in the center of the Sun composed of material with a higher atomic number (Z) than hydrogen or helium -- what he called "a high-Z core." Since high-Z materials are thought to be produced only in supernova events, postulating such a core has implications for theories of solar formation as well as solar composition. One likely candidate element for such a core is iron, and Rouse's theory has been referred to (by him and others) as the idea of a solar "iron core."

Rouse's idea that the sun may have a high-Z core has been considered pretty wild by most solar physicists, not simply because his career path has made him a kind of "outsider" in the solar physics community: the main objection has been to the implications his theory has for the formation of the Sun. The solar system is commonly thought to have formed about 4.5 billion years ago from a homogeneous, well-mixed protosolar nebula, 71 percent hydrogen, 27 percent helium, and only 2 percent heavier elements. Rouse's theory implies a more inhomogeneous core of solar system formation, perhaps containing clumps of high-Z elements formed locally in some previous supernova.

But his colleague Joyce Guzik, a solar modeler at Los Alamos National Laboratory, said, "Dr. Rouse's methods are independent of or different from the ones used by most researchers, but his approach is still valid and reasonable. If he gets the same results by different methods for the interior structure of the sun, we are reassured about the correctness of our models. If Dr. Rouse obtains different results -- as he sometimes does -- we are challenged to understand and track down the reasons for the differences, which often leads us to new insights."

How is what this guy is postulating any different from what the subject of the article is postulating? I'm not sure I see the difference (except that the Rouse guy came up with it decades ago). I'm having a hard time labeling him a crackpot or a bad scientist when I find another seemingly well-respected person with basically the same theory. I haven't seen any evidence that tells me that the one is doing things badly and the other is not. Not trying to be confrontational, I just can't understand why the subject of the article is being dismissed as sort of a loser from the information we know on him.