A sophisticated new model raised the Sun’s estimated silver abundance by 55%, shrinking its discrepancy with primitive meteorites from 0.25 to just 0.06 dex—and largely resolving a longstanding Solar System puzzle.

A sophisticated new model raised the Sun’s estimated silver abundance by 55%, shrinking its discrepancy with primitive meteorites from 0.25 to just 0.06 dex—and largely resolving a longstanding Solar System puzzle.

The Sun has not acquired any new silver. What has changed is the amount astronomers infer from two difficult fingerprints in its spectrum. A new calculation raises the recommended photospheric silver abundance from 0.96 to 1.15 on astronomy’s logarithmic abundance scale, an increase of 0.19 dex that translates to a factor of about 1.55. The result comes from a peer-reviewed paper by Sema Caliskan of Uppsala University and colleagues, published i…