Sandia National Laboratories | 2019 Sep 10
Sandia experiments at temperature of sun offer solutions to solar model problems
Experimenting at 4.1 million degrees Fahrenheit, physicists at Sandia National Laboratories’ Z machine have found that an astronomical model — used for 40 years to predict the sun’s behavior as well as the life and death of stars — underestimates the energy blockage caused by free-floating iron atoms, a major player in those processes.
The blockage effect, called opacity, is an element’s natural resistance to energy passing through it, similar to an opaque window’s resistance to the passage of light. ...
The good news is that that Sandia’s experimental opacity measurements can help bloodlessly resolve a major discrepancy in how the widely used Standard Solar Model uses the composition of the sun to predict the behavior of stars. ...
Plot Thickens in Solar Opacity Debate
APS Physics Viewpoint | 2019 Jun 10
Systematic Study of L -Shell Opacity at Stellar Interior Temperatures ~ T. Nagayama et al
- Physical Review Letters 122(23):235001 (14 Jun 2019) DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.122.235001