Did you ever wonder about our nearest star, the sun, or am I the only one who has? Do you know what it is made up of, and don't say star dust? If you said mostly hydrogen, you would be correct for the surface, but you would be only half right at the center, where it is half hydrogen and half helium. Either of those two gasses, when a balloon is filled with them, will float off into the air. Is that why the sun stays up in the sky (grin)?
OK, let us just pretend that we could find a two and a half gallon bucket and long rope that are made out of some yet to be discovered super duper material that can withstand very high temperatures and long and strong enough to reach the center of the sun. That is a very long ways, about 432,000 miles or about 100 times more than the Earth's at 3963.2 miles. The surface of the sun is much cooler than the center. At the surface it is about 9940 degrees and at the center, about 28.3 million degrees.
OK, that 2.5 gallon bucket of sun stuff taken from the surface would weigh 0.0000042 pounds and be 91 percent hydrogen. That same bucket, if filled with sun stuff taken from the center of the sun would weigh in at 3384 pounds; that is over 8000 times as much and it would be very, very dense. It would be 5.4 pounds per cubic inch, much heavier than lead. Anything that super dense would have to be a solid, right? Wrong!! The extreme heat keeps it from being a solid.
See, you don't have to have a powerful telescope and search the far universe for strange things when our sun, at its core, is doing strange things right here close to us. There are strange and wondrous things going on all around us all the time and all we have to do is really take a close look at them. . . but please don't look directly at the sun, it would surely damage your eyes!! OK, right now, the sun has disappeared and the thunder is rumbling and it looks like we are going to get hit with a string of storms heading south here in East Texas. But, rain or shine, I want you all to have a great day, you hear?
This post didn't come up yesterday... I ALWAYS check during the day and was wondering if you had internet problems... So... didn't read it until today. I don't even pretend to understand about the universe... but then I don't understand about universal joints either.... I try ;-)
ReplyDeleteI was wondering why I didn't get any comments. That is funny, because my wife could get my blog on her tablet. She always reads it and tells me what words are spelled wrong and have to change.
DeleteI didn't spend much time on the computer yesterday because I was getting ready to go to my daughter's house. I'm going back tomorrow morning and will stop and get donuts on the way. She has mentioned donuts several times today but doesn't remember it at all - that's the meds working, but I figure she needs some comfort food and so do I!
ReplyDeleteYour daughter is more important than the blogs.
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