News Release

UMR professor to discuss new view of solar system in KC

Meeting Announcement

University of Missouri-Rolla

ROLLA, Mo. -- Iron, not hydrogen, is the sun's most abundant element, says a University of Missouri-Rolla professor who will give a presentation at 2:30 p.m. Oct. 14 at the 31st annual Mid-America Regional Astrophysics Conference in Kansas City's Linda Hall Library, 5109 Cherry St., Kansas City, Mo.

Dr. Oliver Manuel, a professor of chemistry at UMR, doesn't look at the solar system like most of his colleagues. He says hydrogen fusion creates some of the sun's heat, but only on the surface. Manuel thinks most of the heat comes from -- get this -- the core of an exploded supernova that, he says, continues to generate energy within the iron-rich interior of the sun. Manuel is convinced the solar system was born catastrophically out of a supernova -- an idea which goes against the widely-held belief among astrophysicists that the sun and planets were formed 4.5 billion years ago in a relatively ambiguous cloud of interstellar dust. Iron and the heavy element known as xenon are at the center of Manuel's efforts to change the way people think about the beginning of the solar system. Strange xenon is a primitive element produced in supernova explosions. Manuel believes such an explosion rocked our area of the Milky Way galaxy five billion years ago and -- kaboom! -- gave birth to all the heavenly bodies that populate our general neighborhood.

The latest data from NASA's Galileo probe of Jupiter indicates traces of strange xenon gases, solid evidence against the conventional model of the solar system's creation as far as Manuel is concerned. He has also studied moon rocks and the solar wind to look for the presence of strange xenon and other telling clues that might help him prove his theory.

If Manuel is right, a star 10 times larger than our sun once roamed the universe in the approximate center of the current system. The star was composed of layered elements, with the heavier elements like iron compressed at the center and the lighter elements (hydrogen, helium) concentrated near the surface. Toward the end of the star's life cycle, the lighter elements fell toward the core, causing chain reactions and massive nuclear explosions. According to Manuel, our sun formed around the iron core of the exploded star and the planets formed from the catastrophic remnants.

Until 1994, the solar system was the only known case of planets orbiting a star, and most scientists considered it impossible to form such a planetary system out of supernova remnants. But the recently identified pulsar planetary system 1257+12 consists of three earthlike planets revolving around a pulsar -- too close to have been in orbit around the parent star before it exploded as a supernova. This leaves little doubt that the planets formed from the supernova debris.

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For more information about Manuel's talk in Kansas City, contact the UMR public relations office at (573) 341-4328.


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