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The Solar Oxygen Crisis
Astrophysicist writes "The Astrophysical Journal this week published an article about the abundance of oxygen in the Sun. Oxygen is the third most abundant atom in the universe, behind hydrogen and helium. Most of the hydrogen and helium was formed in the Big Bang, which means that oxygen is the element most frequently produced by nuclear fusion reactions in the interior of the stars. The solar abundance of oxygen, which is key in astrophysics because of its use as a calibration reference for other objects, was thought to be well established since the 80s. However, recent evidence indicates that it has been overestimated by almost a factor of two. A revision of the solar oxygen abundance would have a cascading effect on other important elements, such as carbon, nitrogen and neon, whose abundance is only known relative to that of oxygen. In addition to the impact on the chemical composition of many stars, models of solar interior may require some reworking in order to be consistent with the new data."
That amount of oxygen is just under the amount needed to create a stable atmosphere for human life on the sun.
I guess there's always Mercury.
This takes my breath away!
While I can see how this may involve the need to change some parts of the theories of how a star works I'm not sure I see how, either here or in the referenced paper in the Astrophysical Journal, this qualifies as a "crisis". In essence they're saying that the results of their current observations indicate that previous theories need to be modified. How is this is a crisis?
You can find the full article of this at the Astrophysics Preprint server. See here.
I couldn't tell if you were experimenting with poor-man's cryogenics or looking for the orange sherbet.
and I thought my cascading errors were bad!
Wait for it...3, 2, 1:
We will now see a bunch of programmers and geeks try to display their scientific understandings and fail miserably. Usually because they read a chapter or 2 of Hawkings, or they know how to spell Fiene...Feinama...that really cool and funny fizicist...phyzi...fiscis...you know, someone who studies how the Universe works.
I think we'd be better off sharing bio-diesel recipes and gossiping about our favorite TV series that are due for cancellation.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
Since when does needing to rethink a few scientific models, and go back and gather some data again now that we know we might have measured wrong constitue a crisis?
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
I thought it was gonna be something else Bush and Rove were at fault for.
Headline:
Sun has less Oxygen that thought, women and children hit hardest.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Can we please reserve the term "crisis" for events where lives are at stake, and not when some astrophysicists are going to need to re-compute some scientific models?
Oxygen is a by-product of nuclear fusion in some stars. Hydrogen is burnt to helium in the main-sequence part of a star's life, helium is burnt to carbon in the red giant phase, and after that there are a sequence of short-lived reactions that only take place in the larger stars, in which carbon is burnt oxygen and oxygen is burnt to a whole bunch of things.
The nuclear physics of all this is well understood, so if the amount of oxygen in the Sun is less than we'd anticipated then that means we've got something wrong about how we understand the insides of stars, about the pressures and temperatures that hold there. It might mean that fewer stars ever get around to producing oxygen, or perhaps that more stars make it all the way to burning it up again, or it might tell us there was something unusual about the nebula our own sun came from. It means, basically, that there's some interesting astrophysics waiting to be done, and that's enough to make astrophysicists very happy :-)
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Yet more evidence that Solar Warming is really happening. Before you know it, the solar polar ice caps will melt, covering the entire surface of the sun to a depth of 23 feet and extinguishing its flames. Then we're completely screwed.
I can see why the article calls this a "crisis." Scoff at your own peril.
This is my post. There are many others like it. If you don't like what you read here, go try one of the others.
This is not a new issue in astrophysics, and has been floating since 2004. There are two basic ways to measure the abundances. One is by looking at hte oscillations in the sun, and using those to probe the solar interior. This is called "helioseismology", since it is very similar to the way seismologists figure out the structure and composition of hte earth, by observing seismic waves.
The other way is to take a spectrum of the sun (which is really just the solar photosphere -- the outer layers, or "atmosphere"). To interpret the spectra, one needs a model, which is used to derive the abundance (how much oxygen there is).
Now...until recently the models used for deriving abundances were simple 1-dimensional models, which made some assumptions (such as "local thermodynamic equilibrium") and include some fudge factors to account for the fact that you're solving a 3-d problem in 1-d.
The oxygen problem arises when you use accurate, 3-D models, which don't make the LTE assumption mentioned above -- called non-local thermodynamic equilibrium (NLTE). When one compares the abundances from the 3d NLTE models with what is expected from the helioseismology predictions, the discrepancy arises.
Others have posted the link to the full journal article on the pre-print server (here). The introduction of this paper is a pretty good summary of the problem, albeit intended for a scientific audience.
Less oxygen around than we thought.. What process rapidly consumes oxygen? Hydrogen&Oxygen fuel cells used in rockets. Who recently flew into space? Microsoft billionaire Simonyi. What is produced in the reaction? Water vapor. What does water vapor in the atmosphere do? Act as a greenhouse gas and cause global warming. What will be one of the effects of global warming? Many more third world refugees. Who benefits from there being more third world refugees? Providers of technology for the OLPC project. Which company recently became part of the project? Microsoft!
.. So not worth it.
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Don't worry, we'll just blame it on the USA. They didn't sign the Kyoto protocol and now look at the mess we've got.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)