Scientists have discovered that the sun contains about 55% more silver than previous estimates suggested, solving a long-standing mystery about the element’s abundance in our solar system.
The finding comes from researchers at Uppsala University in Sweden, who developed a more accurate way to measure the sun’s chemical makeup.
The study improves our understanding of the sun and could help scientists learn more about how stars, planets, and the elements that make up the universe formed over billions of years.
Although the sun is enormous, it is made almost entirely of hydrogen and helium. Only about 1.5% of its mass consists of heavier elements, including carbon, iron, oxygen, and silver.
While these elements make up only a tiny fraction of the sun, they provide valuable clues about the history of the cosmos.
Because the sun is used as a reference for studying other stars, knowing its exact composition is extremely important.
It helps astronomers compare different stars and better understand how galaxies have changed over time.
The research was led by Sema Caliskan during her Ph.D. studies at Uppsala University. To measure the amount of silver in the sun, the team analyzed sunlight using a technique called spectroscopy.
When light passes through the sun’s outer atmosphere, atoms absorb specific wavelengths of light, leaving behind dark lines in the spectrum. Every chemical element produces its own unique pattern of these lines, almost like a fingerprint. By studying these patterns, scientists can determine which elements are present and estimate how much of each one exists.
Earlier studies relied on simplified models of the sun’s atmosphere. The new research used a much more realistic computer model that better represents the changing conditions in the sun’s outer layers. It also included improved calculations of how silver atoms interact with light and surrounding particles.
Unlike previous methods, the new model accounts for complex effects in which sunlight itself influences the behavior of the same silver atoms that create the spectral lines. This allowed the researchers to make a much more accurate measurement.
The updated result helps solve a puzzle that has troubled astronomers for years. Scientists had noticed that the amount of silver measured in the sun was much lower than the amount found in some of the oldest meteorites in the solar system.
This was surprising because both the sun and these ancient meteorites formed from the same cloud of gas and dust around 4.6 billion years ago. They were expected to have nearly identical chemical compositions.
With the new calculations, the silver abundance in the sun now closely matches the values found in these primitive meteorites, resolving the discrepancy.
The researchers believe their improved method can also be used to study other stars. By measuring silver and other elements in stars of different ages and types, scientists hope to better understand where these elements were created during stellar evolution and explosive events such as supernovae, and how they spread throughout the Milky Way over billions of years.
