© Jeffrey J Wolynski

Charles,

This is a very, very big issue with me as well in the development of stellar metamorphosis. If material is opaque in the outer layers of young stars such as the Sun, then it means they are blocking most of the other elements from view. This would lead researchers to believe that young stars are mostly helium and hydrogen. In which case, if the helium is more opaque than they believe it to be, it would skew all their measurements of elemental abundance in the Sun. Thus, the Sun and other young stars could have much higher percentages of heavier elements, such as iron, silicon, nitrogen and oxygen in their atmospheres (photospheres). At least that is what I understand.

Also, we can not forget Marklund convection. Ionized material sorts itself out chemically based on its ionization potential. Thus, helium and hydrogen which have very high ionization potentials take up the entire outer layers of all young stars. Thus if hydrogen and helium are blocking most of the other elements from view, coupled with the fact that they have the highest ionization potential, we are thus lead to the conclusion that all stars in the Milky Way galaxy are mostly helium and hydrogen. This may not be true.

This is what I believe the case to be. If anything, the outer "shell" of the Sun is layered doubly with the ionized elements sandwiching the surface structure together like bubbles in a bubble bath. The high ionization elements are the swirling surface of the bubble, the iron is the soap bubble itself giving structure, and other elements with low ionization potential are intermingled. Not to mention the cells of the photosphere could be arranged like organic cells in any living tissue, as the phopholipid bi-layer regulates incoming and outgoing material that is ionized. Scary idea, but the Suns surface could be arranged similar to the walls of any organic tissue.

Here is a picture of that tissue via wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Plant_cell_type_sclerenchyma_fibers.png