Iron Core Sun

[katsisco]

Wiki on the Sun says that iron core defies current science as iron stops nuclear reactions and the current science says that the sun has a nuke core. Not iron. We are just beginning to explore how metals react differently under great pressure and heat, acquiring or losing magnetism, acquiring quantum synchronicity and super conductivity and/or fluidity, so perhaps we can have an ironcore sun afterall.

i was reading one of your posters (have lost the blog in sign-in process) and he says that the iron in the system is very low but very high in the surface of the Earth. So, it follows that the iron we have under our feet is common and following one of the rules of science, it must be common everywhere. Even on the sun? Magnetic field beyond our comprehension could be responsible for a controlled collapsse of the sun into an iron core sun?

[JMJones0424]

..iron in the system is very low but very high in the surface of the Earth. So, it follows that the iron we have under our feet is common and following one of the rules of science, it must be common everywhere. Even on the sun? Magnetic field beyond our comprehension could be responsible for a controlled collapsse of the sun into an iron core sun?

 

Your "it follows" is flawed on many levels. Look around you. Life is very common on the surface of the Earth, and yet nowhere other than Earth has life yet been found. By your logic, life should be common at the center of the sun.

 

The nuclear physics of a star's life cycle is pretty well understood. A star exists as a star because the energy produced from fusion of its constituent elements helps to prevent the gravitational collapse of the star. As very massive stars progress from the fusion of hydrogen to more massive elements, the energy produced is less able to counteract the star's gravity. Once iron is produced, the fusion process ceases to be a net producer of energy, it now CONSUMES energy. The energy released through fusion, that once kept the star from imploding, now accelerates the gravitational collapse, resulting in a supernova. For your hypothesis to be correct, you would need to provide evidence that contradicts all that is known about stellar nucleosynthesis and nuclear physics.

 

From wikipedia on Stellar Evolution of Massive Stars

Once the nucleosynthesis process arrives at iron-56, the continuation of this process consumes energy (the addition of fragments to nuclei releases less energy than required to break them off the parent nuclei). If the mass of the core exceeds the Chandrasekhar limit, electron degeneracy pressure will be unable to support its weight against the force of gravity, and the core will undergo sudden, catastrophic collapse to form a neutron star or (in the case of cores that exceed the Tolman-Oppenheimer-Volkoff limit), a black hole. Through a process that is not completely understood, some of the gravitational potential energy released by this core collapse is converted into a Type Ib, Type Ic, or Type II supernova.

 

I find it awe inspiring that the somewhat common iron that makes up my frying pan, my truck, my barbeque pit, and even the hemoglobin that enables my cells to consume energy is the same iron that once caused the death of a star!

Edited July 11, 2012 by JMJones0424

[Lancewen]

The nuclear physics of a star's life cycle is pretty well understood. A star exists as a star because the energy produced from fusion of its constituent elements helps to prevent the gravitational collapse of the star. As very massive stars progress from the fusion of hydrogen to more massive elements, the energy produced is less able to counteract the star's gravity. Once iron is produced, the fusion process ceases to be a net producer of energy, it now CONSUMES energy. The energy released through fusion, that once kept the star from imploding, now accelerates the gravitational collapse, resulting in a supernova. For your hypothesis to be correct, you would need to provide evidence that contradicts all that is known about stellar nucleosynthesis and nuclear physics.

 

I think what katsisco meant was that whatever elements the planets have the sun must also have. That means there is lots of iron in the sun, but just not enough to stop the energy needed to keep the sun from collapsing in on itself. That process can only happen when the amount of iron in the sun reaches the critical tipping point (whatever that may be?).

 

 

 

[Moontanman]

I think it also has to be pointed out that while the sun has a high metalicity the iron is a plasma and not concentrated at the core but mixed throughout the sun... At least that's my understanding...

[Lancewen]

I think it also has to be pointed out that while the sun has a high metalicity the iron is a plasma and not concentrated at the core but mixed throughout the sun... At least that's my understanding...

 

And I sure don't have a problem with that line of thought. I wonder if there's any way to determine what percentage of every element make up the sun's plasma. Maybe there's a way to modify magnetic fields to create an affinity for a particular element as a way to mine the sun's plasmas?

[CraigD]

I wonder if there's any way to determine what percentage of every element make up the sun's plasma.

The spectroscopically measured abundance of elements in the Sun has been well known since before I was introduced to it in school in the late 1970s, and hasn’t undergone any major revisions since then. A readily available and nicely formatted (except that the sort function doesn’t work properly :( - a wikipedia formatting expert needs to fix that!) source is the S1 column of this wikipedia data page section.

 

You’ll notice that, in a near tie with silicon and magnesium, iron is the 7th most abundant element in the sun. Also notice that all of the elements except hydrogen and helium constitute less than 1% of the sun (by count of nuclei).

 

What proponents (such as David Talbot) of the “iron core Sun” idea (which IMHO is a quagmire of pseudoscience), believe, is that, hidden from what we can see, the sun has a massive iron core (or, in some versions, something more exotic, like a mini neutron star), similar to but proportionately larger than the Earth’s and other planets’. This, they believe, discredits conventional theories of how fusion occurs in the Sun – instead, while more-or-less agreeing with the conventional view that fusion is occurring in the Sun’s core, the heat from it radiating and convecting slowly outward to its surface to be radiated as sunlight, they believe that this massive core is causing the fusion.

 

Maybe there's a way to modify magnetic fields to create an affinity for a particular element as a way to mine the sun's plasmas?

I can’t imagine any reason this would be impossible, given space engineering capabilities much more advanced than our current ones, but given that you’d have to “sift through” so much hydrogen and helium to get the traces of other elements, while powerfully refrigerating everything involved, then have to boost it out of the deepest gravity well in the solar system, I doubt it’s worthwhile. Mining the asteroids is, I think, a better approach.

 

Wiki on the Sun says that iron core defies current science as iron stops nuclear reactions ...

I think it’s a good idea to clarify what conventional science means by “nuclear fusion stops at iron” and similar phrases, such as the katsisco’s “iron stops nuclear reactions”.

 

Atomic nuclei can be fused – forced together – to form ones with higher atomic numbers. For the fusion of lighter elements, such as hydrogen (atomic number 1) to helium (2), more energy is released than is used. For increasingly heavy elements, the net energy released becomes smaller. The last major fusion reaction that produces more energy than it uses is silicon (28) can be fused to iron (56). For Iron and heavier elements, it takes more energy to fuse them into yet heavier elements, so this happens only in short, net-energy losing events, like supernovas.

 

Iron doesn’t stop nuclear fusion. It’s the heaviest element that’s produced in large quantities by it.

 

A summary and links to more detailed information can be found at the wikipedia article stellar nucleosynthesis