Posted on 06/01/2007 8:22:19 PM PDT by Moonman62
No, that's not OK. You threw down the gauntlet, and cannot call foul when someone picks it up. If you don't want to be addressed, and in particular called on the ignorance you spout, the internet is not for you.
Beyond that, there may be people reading who also don't know the answers to the questions you raise, but who actually do want to know what they are. For their benefit, and not for yours, I offer the following:
Q: What the sun is made out of?
A: It's mostly a plasma of hydrogen and helium, plus carbon, oxygen, nitrogen and other elements.
Q: How do you know it's a plasma?
A: Because we can measure the temperature of the sun's surface, by the shape of the blackbody curve. It's around 6000 Kelvin. That's enough to render any of those elements into a plasma.
Q: How do you know what elements make up the plasma?
A: We know it because of the spectral lines in the light from the sun. The frequencies tell us what atoms are present, and their brightness tells us how much.
Q: How do you know what each those lines are?
A: Because we measured them in the laboratory beforehand. There was an exception to this, however: there was a series of lines in the solar spectrum that had never been seen before. The frequencies of those lines matched what theory predicted for the missing element 2 of the Periodic Table. They named this newly discovered element "Helium" after the sun, where it was discovered. Only later was it found on Earth.
Q: How do you know that the material between the Earth and the Sun isn't responsible for the spectral lines?
A: For one thing, the intervening material isn't bright enough; the sun puts out a lot of light, in case you hadn't noticed. But more importantly, we can measure the stuff between the Earth and the sun. Take Venus, for example. We know the chemical composition of its atmosphere because we've sent probes down into it and measured it. We can also measure its spectral lines from Earth. The two agree, so that's a firm foundation. Fair enough? Well, we can also use Venus to probe what's between the Earth and the sun: as Venus swings around its orbit, sometimes it's on the near side of the sun, and sometimes it's on the far side. As it passes behind the sun, we're looking right past the edge of the sun, through all the intervening material. By observing the changes in the spectrum of Venus, as we see it from Earth, we can measure that intervening material.
Q: But still, wouldn't it be more reliable to have a sample of the sun that you could measure directly in the lab?
A: Not really, because if we had it in the lab, we'd determine its composition by the same spectrographic technique. A spectrum at arm's length is no better than one at 100 million miles. That said, we do have such samples. The sun blows off huge bubbles of its own material out into space, all the time. We have probes out there that collect samples and analyze them.
Q: How do you know that hydrogen fusion powers the sun?
A: Really, it's the only power source we know about that can actually do the job. The sun puts out a lot of power. The only other source we know about that can do that is gravitational collapse, but first, the sun would cool too rapidly, and second, that would be inconsistent with what we see in other stars in the sky. More importantly, however, we can measure those fusion reactions directly by the neutrinos that come out of the sun.
Q: How do those neutrinos tell you what reactions are going on in the sun?
A: They tell us that by their energies. Different nuclear reactions produce neutrinos of different energies. The neutrinos from the sun indicate proton fusion into helium, catalyzed by Beryllium and Boron.
Q: How do you know that those neutrinos come from the sun, and not from elsewhere in space?
A: Because we can tell what direction the neutrinos are coming from. In fact, we have enough of them to produce a neutrino image of the sun.
Q: Isn't there a solar neutrino deficit, where they don't observe as many neutrinos as theory predicts?
A: Not anymore. The Sudbury Neutrino Observatory resolved that problem. Previous detectors were only sensitive to one type of neutrino, but if you measure all of the neutrinos coming from the sun, the number is in accordance with what is predicted by the standard solar model.
I suppose that's the great thing about the interwebs, huh? You can insult people all you want, but when it comes to those crazy things called facts and logic, you can just cry foul and run away!
Thanks for letting us show everyone else how wrong you were. It was most helpful.
There are those factors, of course, but I tend to think it has more to do with the fact that most of the official papers were written in French, and submitted to the French Academie. (Note: To really appreciate the flavor of the expedition, it is necessary to read the original documents, in French of course, as no acceptable translation has been provided.)
News of the expedition was then swept up in a bit of confusing unpleasantness following the turn of the previous century, and world respect never quite got back to what it was for the French.
Then there is the matter of the Chinese involvement. For "serious" scientists and astronomical researchers, anything Chinese was considered a pale imitation of the real thing, including their scientific efforts.
It may also have somehow been shunted into the realm of the unbelievable because of the involvement of Janssen's acquaintance, Jules Verne. His stature as a scientific researcher may ironically have been diminished by his fame as a science-fiction writer.
your replies here were my laugh of the day! thank you!
Pleased and honored! Thank You.
And I for one, thank you for those answers...and I will bet that lots of other posters, and lurkers, appreciate your response as well...thanks...
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