Scientists may have finally solved the mystery of the sun's missing silver - Space

What the report says

Space.com reports that astronomers may have resolved a long-running puzzle over why the sun appeared to contain less silver than expected. The issue arose from comparisons between silver inferred from the sun’s outer layers and silver found in CI chondrites, ancient meteorites thought to preserve material from the same 4.6-billion-year-old cloud that formed the solar system.

According to the report, lead author Sema Caliskan, now a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Liège in Belgium, and colleagues investigated whether the discrepancy came from how scientists interpret sunlight. Astronomers estimate elements in the sun by studying spectral lines, where atoms absorb specific wavelengths. Earlier models of silver atoms did not fully capture complex “non-equilibrium” effects that can change how those absorption signatures appear.

The team used the Tetralith supercomputer in Linköping, Sweden, to model silver atoms with those effects included. Space.com says the new calculations indicate the sun may contain about 55% more silver than previous measurements suggested. That does not make the solar value perfectly match the meteorite record, but the researchers argue it narrows the gap enough to avoid invoking an unusual explanation for missing silver.

The finding matters because trace elements such as silver help scientists reconstruct how heavy elements are made and spread through the Milky Way. Space.com notes that silver is believed to be produced in violent stellar deaths such as supernovas. The research was reported as published in Astronomy & Astrophysics in July 2026, and the team plans to apply similar modeling to other kinds of stars.