Science channel now on "The Sun"

[newtonian]

I will post questions later. It is on now and I am watching it. Originally broadcast in 2000. Missed the surface temperature, btw!<br /><br />Btw - more astronomy programs this afternoon, including on missions to comets and asteroids - notably Wild 2.<br /><br />Have we processed information from Wild 2 yet?<br />It is not totally accurate, as it stated that without the sun earth would be a lifeless ball of rock since all life requires the sun.<br /><br />I would disagree, as some extremophiles live off of ocean vent energy quite independent from the sun - the heat coming from earth's interior.<br /><br />Why was that mistake made? Didn''t they know about extremophiles in 2000.<br /><br />More later - I am watching. <br /><br />Edit: a few notes:<br /><br />The sun for 5 billion years, constantly changing. <br /><br />Beautiful pictures.<br /><br />The power of our sun – if we can control those forces.<br /><br />Big Bang 13 billion years ago, expanding at the speed of light.<br /><br />100 billion galaxies.<br /><br />Toward the edge of one of the arms is the sun.<br /><br />Venus and Mercury are scorched. Mars, etc,. cold.<br /><br />Earth right in the middle – just right<br /><br />Sun sustains every plant and animal.<br /><br />Without the sun the earth would be a lifeless ball of rock (not true – extremophiles.<br /><br />Dr. Helen Mason, Cambridge University.<br /><br />Solar telescope – surface bubbles like ball of oatmeal, changes every second. Each bubble is a thousand miles across.<br /><br />_______ degrees C, could vaporize rock.<br /><br />Inside the sun – probing heart of sun.<br /><br />How powerful? Hershcl figured power of sun a billion, billion, billion watts. <br /><br />How does sun produce its power. If sun was made of coal – it would burn itself out in a few thousand years – widely believed that earth was only a few thousand years old.<br /><br />Composition of sun – spectroscopy.<br /><br />Each chemical absorbs specific wavelengths of the solar spectra – like a fingerprint.<br /><</safety_wrapper>

 

[newtonian]

Ok, program over. It was good, albeit not perfect.<br /><br />Here are more notes, a few questions, and a segway to my thread on surviving red giant phase:<br /><br />Controled fusion – Britain announces Zeta in 1950, a machine to produce fusion – not!<br /><br />More recent attempts – producing plasma – wants to misbehave, need temperatures 10 times hotter than sun’s core: 10 million C at sun’s core; 100 million C for scientists on earth.<br /><br />Sucks up more energy than it creates in current models.<br /><br />However, new reactors will soon (in 50 years?) be online to produce 10 times as much power as they take in to operate.<br /><br />Sunspots:<br /><br />Beautiful motion photos of sunspot details.<br /><br />11 year cycle. Cause discovered recently. Effects include climate on earth. Robert Maunder studying hundreds of years of sunspot records. 2nd half of 17th-early 18th – 1645-1715. sunspots ceased, little ice age on earth.<br /><br />Solar output did not change, either in heat or light.<br /><br />Ultraviolet light also is involved. Only a small portion reaches earth’s surface, rest is filtered out (less now due to ozone depletion).<br /><br />Incredible UV and x-ray photos, in motion. Surface 6,000 degrees? Corona 1 million degrees.<br /><br />Skylab photos.<br /><br />Soho at a lagrange point – sees out to 30 solar radii. More incredible photos in motion.<br /><br />Can block solar disc and produce eclipse type photos.<br /><br />Solar flares and coronal mass ejections – 10’s of millions of degrees for flares. Masses like Mt. Everest flung out (per second?).<br /><br />Question: How much mass is ejected by the sun by flares and coronal mass ejections – does this become significant in 5 billion years and how will this effect earth’s orbit?<br /><br />Does the incredibly powerful solar wind, shown in motion photos, effect earth’s orbit by pressure from said wind, not only directly on earth, but also on earth’s magnetic field which is stetched out due to solar wind.<br /><br />Co

 

[nexium]

Mathematically forever has hardly begun in a few billion years, however I would not fault The Bible if forever ends in about a billion years. My guess is all projections more than a billion years in the future are unreliable.<br />Potassium40 (1,230,000,000 years half life, so this heat source will be puny in 5 billion years) likely produces most of the radioactive heating in Earth's crust.<br />Thorium has a half life of 14,100,000,000 years, so it will continue to warm Earth's deep interior for billions of years after our Sun becomes a white dwarf. I'll guess the center of Earth's core will cool to 100 degrees c about 50 billion years from now, but a lot may happen in such an enormous period of time, and we could find other heat sources, unknown at present. Other isotopes of Earth heating importance mostly have much shorter half life.<br />Yes trees and photovoltaic panels cool nearby air about one degree c, because they extract some of the solar energy. Neil