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.

Universe Today
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