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The Sun: Is it a fusion reactor or concentrated ball lightning?
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by bloodangel421
on 2004-08-26 23:01:17
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I was always been told in my sci classes that the sun is a huge thermonuclear reactor that is been going on for a few billion years. I have read an argument on the contrary, that the sun is more like a concentrated arc lightning than fusion...That the behavior of the solar system and the galaxy matches what a behavior electricity would do in a null gravity...Im confused. Can anyone explain? :) |
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Re: The Sun: Is it a fusion reactor or concentrated ball lightning?
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by
on 2004-08-27 00:44:27 |
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the sun is nothing but one large massive (literally: mass containing) body. the mass pulls inward with an enormous gravitational field. any objects that do not have escape velocity eventually fall into the field, and become part of the large (thousands of times larger than the earth) body. it is clearly understood and widely accepted that this gravitational field is responsible for the reactions, nuclear in nature, which produce the light and other charged particles that are ejected from the sun, and which we see as clear as day (funny pun). the reason for this reaction is simple: inside the sun, the gravitational field is so strong that it is greater than the net gravitational force overwhelms the electric and atomic forces, reducing matter to its elementary components: protons, neutrons, and electrons. this state of matter, this "soup" without atomic structure, is called the plasma form of matter (the other forms being solid, liquid, and gas). lightning is the visible light (photons) given off (or 'generated') when a huge number of negatively charged electrons jump to/from the atmosphere to the ground. same exact thing that happens in those little science fiction lightning lamps you can buy at Spencer's. :P 
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Re: The Sun: Is it a fusion reactor or concentrated ball lightning?
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Well, the energy given off from the lightning is partly being used to start up the fusion process. At least, thats what I think it is.
Death, Rebirth and Create
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Re: The Sun: Is it a fusion reactor or concentrated ball lightning?
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by
on 2004-08-28 18:09:44 |
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the sound, light, and heat energy that lightning gives off is close to nothing compared with the energy of a fusion reaction. if you compare the electric potential of a proton isolated from an atom with the potential energy (due to the nuclear forces) of that same particle, you will see why the electro-magnetic force alone falls several dozen orders of magnitude short of explaining the energy of the sun. we know the sun's mass. if it were made of lightning (a stream of electrons jumping through gas) there would be no way to explain it's size. the sun is not made of lightning, trust me.
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Re: The Sun: Is it a fusion reactor or concentrated ball lightning?
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But the fusion process has to be started with a certain amount of energy(activation energy of a chemical reaction).
Death, Rebirth and Create
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Re: The Sun: Is it a fusion reactor or concentrated ball lightning?
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by
on 2004-08-29 00:42:55 |
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and that energy comes from the force acted upon the sun by its own GRAVITY.
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Re: The Sun: Is it a fusion reactor or concentrated ball lightning?
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by animefanrk2k
on 2004-09-18 04:48:06
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You know, the initial Big Bang could have been enough energy to start off the reaction for all of the stars in all of the galaxies. Depends on whether you believe it or think that there's some alternative theory.  |
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Re: The Sun: Is it a fusion reactor or concentrated ball lightning?
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by
on 2004-09-18 10:34:15 |
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the big bang is one theory of an event capable of producing all of the energy in the universe. it did not "start off" any reactions, it just brought forth the matter that would later collapse in upon its self to form stars. GRAVITY is what makes the sun hot, just as GRAVITY is what makes the core of the earth hot.
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Re: The Sun: Is it a fusion reactor or concentrated ball lightning?
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the sun definitely isn't ball lighning, it's just a extreme large ticking time bomb with a very long timer
Ģöţ ñõţħįňģ Ţθ ĻÖŠÄâ€, Ä•Ã…εóұтђīŋġ ŧÅ? ĢĄİŇ, ₣řÎÂÑ‘Ä?Ã…?ü ằήđ Ĵůśťїçè, ČθóŗůÃ?ŧìÅ?Å‹ ằήđ Ä‹Å?ňƒīņěΜәÀŧ, Vâļóůѓ ịή βαŧŧļé, Ħõńòґ Êń Ä?Ä•Ä?ţħ
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Re: The Sun: Is it a fusion reactor or concentrated ball lightning?
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by stoner4life
on 2005-11-06 12:10:39 (edited 2005-11-06 12:31:20)
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i like that :) , it's true that eventually the sun will expand to possibly twice its size and grow hotter. BUT, it will not go supernova, not big enough (or so i've been told) after that it will shrink and cool into a red dwarf. btw. funny story. high school teacher said once that the color of a star is related to the different gasses (besides helium and hydrogen) in it NOT the size or the ratio of H to HE . so i guess to him a supergiant can be red and a red dwarf can be blue. he didn't like a 16 y/o blowing holes in his theory so he sent me to the office |
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Re: The Sun: Is it a fusion reactor or concentrated ball lightning?
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by IndigoKrow
on 2005-11-06 18:20:20
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The gasses only change the stars color slightly, visible only on a spectrometer. The gasses then actaully only block out various wavelengths of light, they do not "change", persay, the color. Anyway, the way the sun got enough energy to start fusion was indeed due to its size. Because it is so massive the gravity pulls everything together with tremedous force. This basically states that the more pressure a gas is under the hotter it gets from its original temperature (and vice versa). Thus because the gravity is so great and there is no medium by which the heat can escape from the sun, thanks to boyles law we are able to conclude that the sun can produce enough heat to cause the hydrogen to move around rapidly enough to initiate fusion. And besides, any form of lightning would not have been hot enough to initiate a fusion reaction, much less keep it going for billions of years. It falls about 9 million kelvins short. |
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Re: The Sun: Is it a fusion reactor or concentrated ball lightning?
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a quick question on the sun exploding if a star exploding causes or makes a blackhole, and all matter cannot be destroyed. then where does the energy go? does it all end up at the bottom of it causeing there to be an extremely heavy gravitational pull on the bottom of a blackhole? or does it keep going infinitly down that area? (off topic question: does a black hole have demensions?)
"Empires rise and fall, but evil is eternal"
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Re: The Sun: Is it a fusion reactor or concentrated ball lightning?
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by
on 2005-11-07 14:52:48 |
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stars dont "explode". if the gravitational force exceeds the structural integrity of the star, it will implode into a black hole. contrary to popular belief, matter CAN be created and destroyed. take a positron and an electron, let them come in contact, and they annihilate eachother. boom! stars constantly spew out "new" atoms, which are forged inside the star. that is where the carbon and hydrogen that your body is made out of comes from! star dust! a black hole is the area inside the event horizon. the event horizon is the spherical area in space where the gravitational acceleration due to the star's mass is equal to the speed of light. inside the sphere, space-time behaves strangeley (and we dont know for sure). the demensions of a "black hole" are that of volume, of a sphere.
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Re: The Sun: Is it a fusion reactor or concentrated ball lightning?
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the demension of a black hole should be that of a sphere as it must attain a VERy VERy HIGh density... imagine a whole mass that of our sun squeezed in to that of a very small ball.. if i am not wrong.. a ball of radius 5cm ... wat a high density !!
thOr
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Re: The Sun: Is it a fusion reactor or concentrated ball lightning?
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wait so a blackhole isnt a funnel? is it a ball thats so dense and heavy that goes down like something that would go down a sort of net? (thankx for helping me understand so of it)
"Empires rise and fall, but evil is eternal"
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Re: The Sun: Is it a fusion reactor or concentrated ball lightning?
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if i am wrong .. anyone pls correct me.. please i think a black hole is shaped like a funnel in terms of space-time...
thOr
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Re: The Sun: Is it a fusion reactor or concentrated ball lightning?
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I'm not gonna say your worng Kingthor but saying it's a funnel means it would take you somewhere (if you survive) so that would mean that stars turn into portals or tunnels to somewhere else. (I think it's alittle unlikly but still possible or if not fact) I always thought that it was more like a ball caught in a net streching it down to one point and the rest would stay up only strechted.
"Empires rise and fall, but evil is eternal"
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Re: The Sun: Is it a fusion reactor or concentrated ball lightning?
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i think it is a sphere as well.. on second thoughts i think the funnel shape belongs to a wormhole ... if it exist ..
thOr
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Re: The Sun: Is it a fusion reactor or concentrated ball lightning?
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wait if it's a sphere and it sux in different things then where do they go?
"Empires rise and fall, but evil is eternal"
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Re: The Sun: Is it a fusion reactor or concentrated ball lightning?
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by IndigoKrow
on 2005-11-11 12:49:11 (edited 2005-11-11 12:50:24)
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It can be either a funnel or a shpere. It is represented as a funnel in relation to space time because when we look at a picture of such, one of the dimensions has to be time, thus forcing us to look at only two physical dimensions. It would, however, be a sphere if we just looked at it as it lies in our physical dimensions. And also, it's pointless to calculate (though nonethe less cool) how big our sun would be as a black hole. This is because the only stars that do become black holes are at least 3.1 times as massive as our sun. Lastly, if something were to get sucked in to a black hole it would just become part of that black hole. |