Jumbo shrimp!
Posted on 10/06/2004 8:44:49 AM PDT by -=[_Super_Secret_Agent_]=-
Is the Sun really hot?
The question is, on the face of it, almost insane. No-one could possibly doubt that the sun is the only source of external heat on earth. And, certainly, the part that we see, the sun's photosphere, is some 5,800 degrees Kelvin. The solar corona, which extends into space, may be as hot as one million degrees Kelvin. But what exactly is underneath this hot atmosphere? The explanation universally accepted without question is that it must be an even hotter mass of hydrogen gas, fusing into helium and other elements at temperatures of 15 million degrees Kelvin in a continuous thermonuclear explosion -- a giant H bomb.
This universal view is based on the mathematical work of Arthur Eddington in the 1930s and Hans Bethe's theoretical confirmation in the 1950s (for which he won the Nobel prize in 1967). Above all else, we have the overwhelmingly awesome experimental confirmation of the nature of nuclear fusion by the test detonations of H bombs in the Pacific.
However, physicists have always been aware of nagging problems with the conventional view of how stars form and how they burn. And now, Italian physicist Renzo Boscoli, has published details of a theory that is staggering: the theory that far from being hot underneath its atmosphere, the sun may, at its core, be a ball of ice in which not hot, but cold fusion reactions are taking place.
The conventional view of how stars form is that a cloud of interstellar hydrogen collapses under gravity until, under enormous pressure, the atoms of hydrogen become so hot they fuse to form helium. Once ignited, the core of the newly formed star burns continuously, transmuting hydrogen to helium, helium to carbon and so on, until the fuel is exhausted and the star's life is over.
There are some problems with this view. For instance, when gases are compressed, as under gravity, they also heat up, and this makes them expand. As temperature increases, the outward force due to expansion will become greater than the force of gravity compressing the gas and the gas will simply dissipate in space again. How then could the condensing hydrogen cloud ever ignite spontaneously?
There are many other puzzling features of the sun: how can a surface at 'only' 5,800 degrees Kelvin give rise to a corona of 1 million degrees Kelvin? Why does the surface rotate faster at the equator than at higher latitudes? Why does the planet Mercury have a strangely perturbed motion?
In two ground-breaking papers published in Infinite Energy magazine, Renzo Boscoli offers some astounding answers to these puzzles.
Boscoli points out a phenomenon discovered in the 1930s but -- like many such anomalies -- virtually ignored since. French physicist Georges Ranque discovered that if you make a body of gas rotate, as in a turbine, the hottest (most energetic) molecules are somehow separated to the outside of the mass, while the gas at the centre gets colder. It is relatively easily experimentally to make a 'Ranque tube' where the difference in temperature between air in the middle and air at the outside is more than 100 degrees C, simply by causing the air to rotate.
This experimental result appears to contradict the laws of thermodynamics and at present remains unexplained. But Boscoli points out that its implications for the formation of stars may be immense.
While a cloud of hydrogen condensing under gravity is an unlikely candidate for a new star because heat would make it expand and dissipate again, a rotating cloud of hydrogen would give rise to a remarkable object -- one where the temperature at its exterior would continue to rise while the temperature at its core would continue to fall. At first the hydrogen core would become so cold it would liquify and finally solidify.
Says Boscoli, 'If this mass of gas . . . would begin to rotate upon itself, it would necessarily assume a progressively flatter ellipsoidal form as its rotational velocity increased. And . . the Ranque effect would begin to be exerted, therefore producing a cooling at the centre and a heating of the periphery of the ellipsoid.'
He adds, 'Due to a constant Ranque effect I see no reason why the centre would not continue to cool towards absolute zero.'
Boscoli first conceived his ideas some thirty years ago. He has published them for the first time because the Arecibo radiotelescope has reported finding an enormous hydrogen cloud that is very cold (around minus 200 degrees C) and that is rotating on its own axis.
Boscoli goes onto add that nuclear reactions such as that of the H bomb are impossible at absolute zero. But he believes that 'cold' nuclear fusion reactions may be possible due to the immense gravitational pressures. The reaction he envisages is that of the gravitational collapse of a proton and electron, producing a neutron.
Boscoli's theory solves the problem of Mercury's strange orbit and the sun's differential rotation. It also explains sunspots as simply holes in the atmosphere. If Boscoli is right, there may after all, be 'something new under the sun.'
Jumbo shrimp!
Crank science ping.
Welcome to the "Festival of Oxymorons*"!
* - Clueless Alert (e.g., people who think that velocity is measured in units of length2/time2): "oxymoron" is NOT a rare isotope of oxygen.
Thank you LS. Want to clarify something. It appears you are stating that the outer matter, at the final stage of a +4 solar mass star in collapse, experiences very violent gravitational pull from the core, however, is still far enough away from that core to heat and then explode. Simply a matter of rapid compression and enough distance. Is this correct?
Far enough? I assume you're asking why the whole thing doesn't just get swallowed up into a black hole, instead of going supernova.
If that's the question, the answer, AFAIK (I don't have my old astrophysics text available at the moment) is that the outer regions of the atmosphere (which are the only ones with lighter weight nuclei that fuse at lower pressures and temperatures, the core region having already been depleted of everything up to Iron) reach the fusion ignition temperature BEFORE that region reaches the Schwarzchild radius (which is the radius for a given mass below which total gravitational collapse takes place.)
Thus, the whole star is contracting, the core is depleted of lower pressure/temperature fusing nuclei, so nothing happens there right away, meanwhile some of the outer light nuclei-rich regions compress to the point where fusion takes place, and KA-BLOOOWIE! Everything outside of that radius gets ejected in a big-assed explosion (supernova), while the inner core region continues to contract, it's final state dependent upon the residual mass of the remaining core region. (I think some of the iron rich core region may also undergo fusion as the pressures/tempuratures get really enormous; this is the nucleosynthesis process that makes all nuclei heavier than iron, but this process can never maintain a star in equilibrium, because the fusion of all nuclei heavier than iron produces LESS energy than it takes to fuse them together -- it only happens during the supernova event, in which lots of excess energy gets unleashed in a very breif interval of time.
I'll defer to the experts on this, in case I've buggered it up. It's all off the top of my head.
;-)
Um....uh... one does NOT mix degrees and Kelvin. It's 5,800 Kelvin! Or 5,800 degrees (Farenheit or Celsius)!
And this is from a "Science" publication?!
Weep for the future!
IT would be a bad idea to send Kerry. How long would a trip to the sun take? If its longer than 4 months, he will want to turn around and fly home.
D'oh! He brought up "Infinite Energy magazine"--a sure conversation-stopper. I can't read the rest of the article.
Sorry, this isn't correct. I should have read this more carefully, but I was busy using Google image search to find a picture of a shrimp.
The fusion that takes place in a supernova is negligible. What powers a supernova is the gravitational collapse of the core. Think about it: as the core falls inwards, a gigantically large amount of gravitational potential energy is released. This is true whether the core collapses to a black hole or a neutron star. The energy released is typically larger than the total energy derived from fusion over the life of the star(!) That energy has to go someplace, and as the outer layers of the star are optically thick, they absorb it, and are blown out into space. They even absorb a surprisingly large fraction of the neutrino emissions.
I don't understand this. Why would gravitational energy escape from a contracting mass (the core)? I am having trouble understanding how gravity is ever released in any situation, actually. I can only probably erroneously conceptualize the forces of gravity and heat working against each other, with distance the only factor in deciding what gets sucked in and what doesn't.
Or are you saying that, at the brink of collapse, as the core mass rapidly contracts, the gravity that was holding the outer sphere becomes weaker? Thereby allowing the outer sphere to explode?
Someone hand me my yellow plastic hammer to resume pounding blocks please.
So that's where the UFOs come from: inside the sun.
was it hot before it wasn't hot?
Enjoy.
Solar neutrino puzzle is solved....or ....The Sun is more Electric than you think : )
Mr Black Hole gets a black eye : )
Black holes tear logic apart
We now return you to your regular Carl Sagan one liners : )
I'm betting that he would be so indecisive that he wouldn't be able to find his way to the sun in the first place....in other words....a win-win situation!
Now that IS interesting. While I admittedly posted what I wrote from the top of my head, I have subsequently had the opportunity to consult my old Stellar Evolution text, ("The Stars: their structure and evolution" -- R. J. Taylor, 1974, Wykeham Publications, London), and it provides essentially the same account of a supernova event as I posted.
I concluded that the understanding of supernova processes has been modified over the intervening years, while I wasn't paying close attention.
That's what I get for posting without doing a "Google" search first..... thanks for correcting the record.
I don't understand this. Why would gravitational energy escape from a contracting mass (the core)?
When your dinner knife is resting on the table, it has a certain amount of gravitational potential energy. This isn't real energy; this is just the amount of energy that it would gain, if it happened to fall. When you knock it off the table, it picks up speed--gains kinetic energy--and hits the floor with a clatter. Gravitational potential energy has thus been released.
The core of a star is the same way. As it falls, it picks up speed, and when it "hits the floor"--either it becomes a neutron star or a black hole--that energy gets released. It's like the clattering of your knife, only 100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 times louder (give or take one or two zeros). The collapse takes about 40 milliseconds, and in that brief span of time, more energy is released than the star produced over its entire lifetime. That energy (released in the form of photons, neutrinos, etc) has to go someplace, and it can only go into (or through) the outer layers of the star. That's why those layers get blown into space.
Or are you saying that, at the brink of collapse, as the core mass rapidly contracts, the gravity that was holding the outer sphere becomes weaker? Thereby allowing the outer sphere to explode?
It doesn't become weaker. In fact, it doesn't change at all. If there's a sphere of matter of radius R, then to an observer outside of radius R, it exerts exactly the same gravitational pull as if all of the mass of the sphere were concentrated at a point at the center of the sphere. As long as the core collapses in a symmetric way, the gravitational force exerted on an object outside of the core doesn't change one bit.
[Geek alert: There is, however, a huge gravitational wave that gets produced by the collapse. This is a quadrupole distortion: an observer would get momentarily squeezed in one direction and stretched in another. However, the monopole field, which determines the attraction towards the core, remains unchanged.]
Ok, understood. What was throwing me was the "energy" release during the collapse - particularly in a gravity well that massive. Basically, if I am getting this right, the collapse involes heavier particles, and releases much lighter ones. This close?
I'm afraid I don't see where you're going with that.
The point is that "height" turns into "motion" when things fall. That motion is conserved; it has to be manifest somehow. It's gotta go someplace. It gets released mainly as photons and neutrinos, which happen to be light, but that lightness doesn't really matter: a lot of that energy gets absorbed right away by the surrounding material. It's far more energy than is needed for all the rest of the star to escape the gravity well.
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