New Solar Opacities, Abundances, Helioseismology, and Neutrino Fluxes

We construct solar models with the newly calculated radiative opacities from the Opacity Project (OP) and recently determined (lower) heavy element abundances. We compare results from the new models with predictions of a series of models that use OPAL radiative opacities, older determinations of the surface heavy element abundances, and refinements of nuclear reaction rates. For all the variations we consider, solar models that are constructed with the newer and lower heavy element abundances advocated by Asplund et al. (2005) disagree by much more than the estimated measuring errors with helioseismological determinations of the depth of the solar convective zone, the surface helium composition, the internal…