Solar Elemental Abundances

TL;DR

This paper reviews the history and provides a new assessment of solar system elemental and isotopic abundances, emphasizing the sun's composition as a proxy for the entire solar system's initial makeup.

Contribution

It offers a novel evaluation of elemental and isotopic abundances based on CI-chondrites and solar data, updating previous assessments.

Findings

Updated elemental abundance values for the solar system.

Refined isotopic ratios from CI-chondrites and solar observations.

Enhanced understanding of solar system formation processes.

Abstract

Review of the history of solar system elemental abundances with a new assessment of elemental and isotopic abundances from CI-chondrites and solar data. Solar elemental abundances, or solar system elemental abundances refer to the complement of chemical elements in the entire solar system. The sun contains more than 99-percent of the mass in the solar system and therefore the composition of the sun is a good proxy for the composition of the overall solar system. The solar system composition can be taken as the overall composition of the molecular cloud within the interstellar medium from which the solar system formed 4.567 billion years ago. Active research areas in astronomy and cosmochemistry model collapse of a molecular cloud of solar composition into a star with a planetary system, and the physical and chemical fractionation of the elements during planetary formation and differentiation. The solar system composition is the initial composition from which all solar system objects (the sun, terrestrial planets, gas giant planets, planetary satellites and moons, asteroids, Kuiper-belt objects, and comets) were derived. (Abstract truncated).