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Star Spangled Banter:
09/01/2009
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Star Spangled Banter
Some vital statistics: The sun is a huge ball of gas, mostly hydrogen and helium, the two lightest gases in the universe. It is 93,000,000 miles away. The sun’s diameter is 864,000 miles. It would take a chain of 108 earths, strung like beads, to equal the sun’s diameter. The sun’s mass accounts for more than 98% of the entire mass of the solar system. What appears to be the sun’s glowing “surface” is actually thought to be the top of what is called the photosphere. Surrounding the sun for a few more million miles is a much more tenuous part, known as the chromosphere, containing huge flamelike projections called prominences. The chromosphere extends millions of miles, to include the corona. Ordinarily the corona cannot be seen because of the overwhelming brilliance of the photosphere, but during a total solar eclipse, the moon blocks the photosphere, and the corona becomes visible temporarily. But the sun goes on far beyond that, because the magnetosphere extends millions of miles more, beyond the orbits of the outer planets! Thus, it surrounds the earth, and we feel the effects of its electrical and magnetic activity in ways ranging from auroras and disturbed radio reception, to large power failures in the electrical grid that serves the needs of large populated regions of the earth. The temperature of the sun’s photosphere is 11,000 F, but deep within the sun’s core, where measurement is not possible, the temperature has been calculated to be 27,000,000 F! “Normal” air pressure at sea level here on earth is about 15 pounds per square inch. That is the “weight” of a column of air one inch square, extending upward from sea level to…well, as far as it goes. The corresponding pressure within the core of the sun, however, is 340,000,000,000 times greater! This massive ball of gas rotates around its axis, just as does the earth, although there is something unusual going on here. A spot on the sun’s equator takes only 26.9 days to make a complete rotation, whereas near the poles it takes almost 30 days! The sun cannot be made of a solid substance! With all of this mass it is not surprising that the sun’s gravity dominates the solar system. The earth is 93,000,000 miles from the sun, and yet we feel powerful effects of the sun’s gravity, because it tugs at the earth and raises tides, just as does the much closer moon. Tides are higher when the sun and moon line up than when they act at right angles, and the sun’s gravity influences even the most distant parts of the solar system. How surprising this is, considering the fact that gravity is one of the weakest forces in the universe! In past articles I have constructed models of the solar system in which the radius of the earth’s orbit is only an inch. At this scale the sun would merely be a speck 9/1000” (about the thickness of a sheet of heavy paper), and the nearest star would be about 4 miles away. It is hard to imagine the influence of such a tiny speck on another speck so far away! But gravity becomes an important force when so much mass is concentrated in a relatively small volume, and the solar system (in the same scale model) would only extend as far as an outstretched arm. Gravity is sufficient to pull our own atmosphere down upon us with a force of 15 pounds, and with mass the size of the sun would pull more than 432,000 miles of hydrogen and helium inward, generating such an immense pressure that the nuclei of four hydrogen atoms are thought to fuse together to form one helium atom. The weight of four hydrogen atoms is slightly more than the weight of a single helium atom, and the difference appears as energy. Multiplied by countless trillions of atoms, that is what is thought to keep the sun shining more or less as usual for billions of years, until (in about five billion years or so) the supply of hydrogen runs out. Essentially the same process takes place when we detonate a hydrogen bomb. According to prevailing theory, the energy produced in the sun’s core gradually works its way outward, taking about a million years to reach the photosphere, and then radiates outward in all directions. About eight minutes or so later, a very tiny percentage of it reaches the earth. Without it the temperature on the earth would be less than 200 F below zero, and life as we know it could never exist. Although the temperature of the sun’s photosphere is only 11,000 F, millions of miles from the sun, where it should be much cooler, the temperature of the corona is more than 1,000,000 F! Attempts by conventional astronomers to explain this have all seemed contrived. But this is precisely what might be expected if the huge electrical field, which seems to exist throughout the universe, is taken into account. This thinking “outside of the box” might be necessary at times. When I was a practicing clinical psychologist, people would occasionally ask me to devise a program to deal with a certain difficult behavior problem. Sometimes they complained that the treatment program was too difficult, and asked, “Can’t you give me an easier program?” I responded, “If you want an easy solution, just give me an easy problem!” For a solution to a problem that is “out of the box,” you may have to solve it with a solution that is out of the box! A theory is only valuable to the extent that its explanations and predictions agree with what is observed in Nature. So far, the electrical model has satisfied these criteria, but much more work needs to be done. Theories challenging conventional explanations must prove by their track record that they predict and explain Nature in ways that agree with observations of Nature. But then, the same criteria must be met by the prevailing, accepted theories as well! © 2009 by Nathan B. Miron, Ph.D. |
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