Astronomers: The Sun Is Made Of More Metal Than We Ever Thought

Liputan6.com, California – Astronomers have discovered that sun contains more metal metallic than we previously thought, potentially solving astronomical mysteries that have been facing scientists for years.

The sun is Earth’s closest star and the source of all life on Earth. Without it, plants cannot photosynthesize and oxygen abundance will drop.

Scientists know that the sun is a huge ball of hot gas made up of about 98 percent hydrogen and helium.

The sun burns because it is so hot and dense that hydrogen atoms fuse together to make helium, releasing energy in the process.

But the sun is also made of traces of other heavier elements that have been detected.

The remaining materials that make up the sun are carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen, all of which are heavier than hydrogen or helium.

There are traces of heavier elements as well, such as neon, iron, silicon, magnesium, and sulfur, according to the CoolCosmos Caltech Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC) website.

As far as astronomers are concerned, all elements heavier than helium are metals.

To counter all this, scientists have several observational methods at their disposal to find out what’s going on inside the fiery depths of the sun.

One of them is called spectroscopy. As the name suggests, spectroscopy involves observing the spectrum of light given off by the sun, which is represented by a rainbow pattern.

Scientists noted as far back as the early 1800s that black lines would continue to appear in light patterns, and today we know that these black lines indicate the presence of certain chemical elements.

We can tell which element is in the sun because it will cause black lines to appear at certain locations in the rainbow pattern. That’s spectroscopy, in short.

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