NASA's Chandra Neon Discovery Solves Solar Paradox

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<b>NASA's Chandra Neon Discovery Solves Solar Paradox</b><br /><br />LINK<br /><br />NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory survey of nearby sun-like stars suggests there is nearly three times more neon in the sun and local universe than previously believed. If true, this would solve a critical problem with understanding how the sun works.<br /><br />"We use the sun to test how well we understand stars and, to some extent, the rest of the universe," said Jeremy Drake of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass. "But in order to understand the sun, we need to know exactly what it is made of," he added.<br /><br />It is not well known how much neon the sun contains. This is critical information for creating theoretical models of the sun. Neon atoms, along with carbon, oxygen and nitrogen, play an important role in how quickly energy flows from nuclear reactions in the sun's core to its edge, where it then radiates into space.<br /><br />The rate of this energy flow determines the location and size of a crucial stellar region called the convection zone. The zone extends from near the sun's surface inward approximately 125,000 miles. The zone is where the gas undergoes a rolling, convective motion much like the unstable air in a thunderstorm.<br /><br />"This turbulent gas has an extremely important job, because nearly all of the energy emitted at the surface of the sun is transported there by convection," Drake said.<br /><br />The accepted amount of neon in the sun has led to a paradox. The predicted location and size of the solar convection zone disagree with those deduced from solar oscillations. Solar oscillations is a technique astronomers previously relied on to probe the sun's interior. Several scientists have noted the problem could be fixed if the abundance of neon is in fact about three times larger than currently accepted.<br /><br />Attempts to measure the precise