The Sun and the solar system

Discussion in 'Astronomy, Exobiology, & Cosmology' started by kingwinner, Jan 23, 2006.

  1. kingwinner Registered Senior Member

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    1) Will the amount of hydrogen and helium in the sun increase or decrease over the next few million years?

    The answer in my book says they will decrease.......but that doesn't make sense to me! The most common type of nuclear fusion in the Sun is hydrogen fusion, so amount of hydrogen will certainly decrease, but shouldn't the amount of helium be INCREASING instead of decreasing? Or will the helium in fact also decrease in amount?

    2) Why and how do volcanic eruptions aid in the creation of an atmosphere?
     
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  3. Communist Hamster Cricetulus griseus leninus Valued Senior Member

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    1) Helium will increase, hydrogen will decrease. The fusion process takes two hydrogen atoms and smushes them into one helium atom. Therefore, making less hydrogen and more helium. Eventually it will run out of hydrogen and start doing fusion with helium, and that is when it becomes a red giant.

    2) I think they spew out stuff from underground. Someone else will asnwer this in more depth.
     
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  5. snake river rufus Registered Senior Member

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    As CH said. Hydrogen decreases to form helium. It's not the most common type of fusion, it's the only type of fusion in the sun at present. When sol burns most of its hydrogen it will cool and expand becoming a red giant. We need to be off this rock for good when that happens as sol will expand in size to the orbit of mars. When the new red giant burns its helium up sol will become a white dwarf star.
    2) I believe that it is because various forms of carbon are released into the atmosphere giving the plants something to breath.
     
    Last edited: Jan 24, 2006
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  7. leopold Valued Senior Member

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  8. Mosheh Thezion Registered Senior Member

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    FUSION doesnt work... and is still... only a theoretical source of energy...

    not a proven factual source of energy....

    -MT

    FISSION. on the other hand is well in evidense.
     
  9. Light Registered Senior Member

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    Of course fusion works - it's what powers the sun and every star.

    And on a more down-to-earth example, have you never heard of thermonuclear device??? Hydrogen-fusion bomb.
     
  10. Laika Space Bitch Registered Senior Member

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    Volcanic gases, over time, have formed the Earth's oceans and atmosphere. They are predominately water vapour (70-95 percent). There's also quite a bit of carbon dioxide and sulphur dioxide as well as trace amounts of other stuff.
     
  11. snake river rufus Registered Senior Member

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    Fusion might not be practical on a commercial scale but it works quite well on a cosmic scale.
    edited for structure/srr
     
  12. devils_reject Registered Senior Member

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    "It is time for us to enter the solar system"---President George W. Bush at an aerospace summit
     
  13. FallingSkyward How much is there to know? Registered Senior Member

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    L.O.L.
     
  14. Silas asimovbot Registered Senior Member

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    Ha ha ha haha. Creating a slow, controlled fusion reaction is beyond our capability at the moment, yes, but fusion itself is a well understood process. As pointed out, we have in fact created fusion bombs. Cold Fusion was a hoax (though the jury is out on whether it was deliberate or not).

    Fusion's a source of energy all right, just not for running a coffee pot... just yet.
     
  15. Mosheh Thezion Registered Senior Member

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    every fusion reactor on earth.... puts out less energy than as put in...

    i.e.. we put in 100 megawatts of energy... and we get out 99.9 megawatts.

    it is not just a matter of containment.. and sustaining the reaction...

    the reactions we have gotten to work... just dont produce energy.

    period.


    thats why the tokomak is being sold as a transmutation reactor to convert nuclear waste into safer stuff.

    you guys need to study it alittle more.


    and saying the sun, LOOK... is a morons answer...

    fusion has never been made to work.... it has never yielded more than was put in.


    it just doesnt work...


    nature.. says.. entropy.. all large atoms break down... and release energy..

    thus to make bigger atoms from small ones... is reverse.... and uses energy.

    -MT
     
  16. Light Registered Senior Member

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    So then thermonuclear (hydrogen) bombs don't actually work? Because they take in more energy than they produce? Popycock!
     
  17. Ophiolite Valued Senior Member

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    Are you denying, Mosheh, that the sun's energy, and that of other stars, is derived from nuclear fusion? That is what you appear to be saying. Please clarify.
     
  18. Mosheh Thezion Registered Senior Member

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    The extra energy had in an H-bomb is not proven to be fusion...


    placing alot of liquid hydrogen next to an a-bomb... does add output..

    but the question is why?


    how about transmutation.. which then results in decay??? i.e.. fission??

    or just straight fission of the matter which makes up the bomb?? and surrounding land mass???


    to suppose fusion is the only answer... is the easy way out of something which we have no way of confirming.

    4 hydrogens have never been made into helium in the lab....

    and it takes alot of energy to form nuetrons out of hydrogen... energy we dont get back.

    -MT
     
  19. Light Registered Senior Member

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    The answer is quite simple - the hydrogen atoms DO fuse. And of course it cannot be done in a lab environment!!! The hydrogen is placed at the core of the device which is contained in a shell of fissionable uranium which, in turn, is surrounded by a layer of conventional high-explosive.

    As I said elsewhere, please just go back to school. It's clearly obvious you learned practically nothing about nuclear physics and probably didn't get past statics in basic electricity either.
     
  20. Mosheh Thezion Registered Senior Member

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    You can say what you like... it proves nothing..

    please... show us some good links to your version of the h-bomb?

    -MT
     
  21. Clockwood You Forgot Poland Registered Senior Member

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    Fusion can even be done in a laboratory setting and in test fusion reactors. It does work. The problem is that for a sustained reaction to occur, we need to keep it isolated in a magnetic bottle and that takes one hell of a lot of power. It makes slightly less power than the magnetic bottle consumes. THis makes it useless for commercial purposes.

    If we can make a magnetic bottle with less energy or find a way to sustain a reaction without one, we have fusion in the bag.
     
  22. Light Registered Senior Member

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    I'm not "saying what I like", I'm stating the facts. It's not a matter of "liking." Sorry that your education is so poor. And do your OWN research - ever heard of Google?
     
  23. Silas asimovbot Registered Senior Member

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    Mosheh, fusion is a process that derives from quantum mechanics and E=mc<sup>2</sup>. It's not just a word, it's the result of extremely extensive theoretical and mathematical work. When we apply it to the situation we believe is happening in the Sun's interior, we discover that the observed energy output from the Sun matches the expectations from our fusion reaction equations. This is what is known as "confirmation".

    However, in the early years of atomic theory, the energy did not in fact match the results perfectly. Which necessitated the postulation of a new particle, the neutrino, by Wolfgang Pauli. Experiments using nuclear reactors confirmed the presence of the new particle, and the whole fusion theory, including every aspect of the mechanism of the sun's operation, becomes doubly confirmed.


    Now, it strikes me, having spent some time debating scientific and anti-scientific issues on this forum, that this doubting of scientific theories derives from the habit of the anti-Evolutionists. Because nothing is absolutely completely certain, or every theory goes so far, but doesn't quite cover the furthest extremes of the theory, the anti-Evolutionists have seen fit to cast doubt on scientific work of two centuries that has been considered as fully confirmed as any theory there is. Mindful of the fact that one element of the anti-Creationist argument is to pour scorn on casting doubt just on the one theory, it strikes me that Mosheh is now trying to extend that method to other well-established areas of science.


    Science works. Get over it. If you want to critique a scientific theory, bloody well get a scientific education so that you have some minimal basis for expressing your dissent. If you just expose your ignorance of the subject every time you post, what on earth is the point?
     

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