The Case of the Sun's Missing Silver

The Sun's spectrum, crossed by dark Fraunhofer lines where atoms in its outer layers absorb light at specific wavelengths, the fingerprint astronomers use to work out what a star is made of (Credit : NASA)

Astronomers have solved a decades old puzzle about the Sun's missing silver, not by finding something new, but by modelling something old far more accurately. A revised, more realistic model of the Sun's atmosphere reveals it actually contains 55 per cent more silver than previously calculated, finally matching what meteorites have been telling us all along. It's a quiet reminder that some of the biggest revelations in astronomy come not from new data, but from asking familiar questions with sharper tools.

from Universe Today https://ift.tt/PfgY7wc
via IFTTT

Comments

More Data and Machine Learning has Kicked SETI Into High Gear

For over sixty years, astronomers and astrophysicists have been engaged in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). This consists of listening to other star systems for signs of technological activity (or “technosignatures), such as radio transmissions. This first attempt was in 1960, known as Project Ozma, where famed SETI researcher Dr. Frank Drake (father of the Drake Equation) and his colleagues used the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia to conduct a radio survey of Tau Ceti and Epsilon Eridani. Since then, the vast majority of SETI surveys have similarly looked for narrowband radio signals since they are very good at propagating through interstellar space. However, the biggest challenge has always been how to filter out radio transmissions on Earth – aka. radio frequency interference (RFI). In a recent study, an international team led by the Dunlap Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics (DIAA) applied a new deep-learning algorithm to data collecte...

eROSITA Sees Changes in the Most Powerful Quasar

After almost seventy years of study, astronomers are still fascinated by active galactic nuclei (AGN), otherwise known as quasi-stellar objects (or “quasars.”) These are the result of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) at the center of massive galaxies, which cause gas and dust to fall in around them and form accretion disks. The material in these disks is accelerated to close to the speed of light, causing it to release tremendous amounts of radiation in the visible, radio, infrared, ultraviolet, gamma-ray, and X-ray wavelengths. In fact, quasars are so bright that they temporarily outshine every star in their host galaxy’s disk combined. The brightest quasar observed to date, 100,000 billion times as luminous as our Sun, is known as SMSS J114447.77-430859.3 (J1144). This AGN is hosted by a galaxy located roughly 9.6 billion light years from Earth between the constellations Centaurus and Hydra. Using data from the eROSITA All Sky Survey and other space telescopes, an international t...

Planetary Surfaces: Why study them? Can they help us find life elsewhere?

Universe Today recently explored the importance of studying impact craters and what they can teach us about finding life beyond Earth. Impact craters are considered one of the many surface processes—others include volcanism, weathering, erosion, and plate tectonics—that shape surfaces on numerous planetary bodies, with all of them simultaneously occurring on Earth. Here, we will explore how and why planetary scientists study planetary surfaces, the challenges faced when studying other planetary surfaces, what planetary surfaces can teach us about finding life, and how upcoming students can pursue studying planetary surfaces, as well. So, why is it so important to study planetary surfaces throughout the solar system? “Planetary surfaces record the history of the Solar System, a history that’s almost entirely lost to us here on Earth,” Dr. Paul Byrne, who is an Associate Professor of Earth, Environmental, and Planetary Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, tells Uni...

INFORMATION

Search This Blog