Found this in this morning's Nature Contents.
Al.
Editor's Summary
10 August 2006
Cosmic lithium is out of sight
Precise measurements of the cosmic microwave background have revealed much about the nature of the early Universe and its expansion. There is a persistent discrepancy, however: the observed amount of lithium in the oldest stars is less than half that produced by nuclear reactions in the Big Bang. Korn et al. resolve this discrepancy by showing that trends in the abundances of other elements are explained by diffusion turbulent mixing, which takes the lithium deep into the stars.
News and Views: Cosmology: Where all the lithium went
For some years, astronomers have been trying to track down all the lithium predicted by standard cosmological models. Spectroscopic dissection of globular clusters reveals that the answer might lie in the stars.
Corinne Charbonnel
Letter
Nature 442, 657-659(10 August 2006) | doi:10.1038/nature05011; Received 28 March 2006; Accepted 14 June 2006
A probable stellar solution to the cosmological lithium discrepancy
A. J. Korn1, F. Grundahl2, O. Richard3, P. S. Barklem1, L. Mashonkina4, R. Collet1, N. Piskunov1 and B. Gustafsson1
Top of page The measurement of the cosmic microwave background has strongly constrained the cosmological parameters of the Universe1. When the measured density of baryons (ordinary matter) is combined with standard Big Bang nucleosynthesis calculations2,3, the amounts of hydrogen, helium and lithium produced shortly after the Big Bang can be predicted with unprecedented precision1,4. The predicted primordial lithium abundance is a factor of two to three higher than the value measured in the atmospheres of old stars5,6. With estimated errors of 10 to 25%, this cosmological lithium discrepancy seriously challenges our understanding of stellar physics, Big Bang nucleosynthesis or both. Certain modifications to nucleosynthesis have been proposed7, but found experimentally not to be viable8. Diffusion theory, however, predicts atmospheric abundances of stars to vary with time9, which offers a possible explanation of the discrepancy. Here we report spectroscopic observations of stars in the metal-poor globular cluster NGC 6397 that reveal trends of atmospheric abundance with evolutionary stage for various elements. These element-specific trends are reproduced by stellar-evolution models with diffusion and turbulent mixing10. We thus conclude that diffusion is predominantly responsible for the low apparent stellar lithium abundance in the atmospheres of old stars by transporting the lithium deep into the star.
