Is it possible to land on the Sun?
- Thread starter K.I.L.E.R
- Start date
I wouldn't say 'sink', as much I would say 'disperse'. In a non pleasant way =)
But at least you will be satisfied that the sun now has a few (eg ~10^-30) seconds longer to live, as it will be pleasantly fusioning all the additional atoms of hydrogen you nicely donated to its cause.
But at least you will be satisfied that the sun now has a few (eg ~10^-30) seconds longer to live, as it will be pleasantly fusioning all the additional atoms of hydrogen you nicely donated to its cause.
Hm... yes... the Sun's gravity versus the explosions going on.
Starting with the gravitational force equation:
.... ah.... so... um... force of a fusion explosion someone?
Starting with the gravitational force equation:
Code:
F=Gm1m2 / r2
G = 6.6726 x 10-11 m3 kg-1 s-2 (gravitational constant)
m1= 1.98892 x 1030 kg (mass of Sol)
m2= 397,805,000 kg ([url=http://www.kasper-online.de/en/docs/startrek/ncc1701d.htm]um... mass of the Enterprise D[/url])
r = 6.955×108 m (equatorial radius of Sol, assuming the Enterprise was at the surface)
F= 109,141,112,129 N = 109.1 GN.... ah.... so... um... force of a fusion explosion someone?
And here was I thinking it was going to be another of K.i.l.e.r's "jokes"...something with a punchline of "going at night".
Mintmaster
Veteran
That force of gravity is only 28g, so I don't think that's enough for fusion. A person would be pinned to the floor and black out, but a machine could survive that force easily..... ah.... so... um... force of a fusion explosion someone?
KILER's assumptions are the problem. We can't make a metal that good, as even absorbing 0.1% of the sun's 65 MW/m^2 radiation is way too much (metals aren't nearly that reflective), to say nothing about conduction. Nor can we land on the surface, as the outer part has extremely low density.
So no, KILER, it can't happen.
Eh? 109 giganewtons? That's like 10 billion G's.
hm... how about making the ship's hull out of a superconductor? Or maybe I'm thinking too much of Ringworld.
hm... how about making the ship's hull out of a superconductor? Or maybe I'm thinking too much of Ringworld.
Because superconductors never warm up?
At best, a superconductor can conduct heat by passing energy along on its easy-flowing electrons, but that doesn't trump thermodynamics. Heat passing through has to go somewhere, and the temperature variation would be pretty much nonexistent from one side of the ship to the other.
The only temperature variation would be between the briefly superconducting ship and the outside. It would have the least resistance possible to being cooked.
As for landing:
The closest to landing on a ball of plasma would be hitting some kind of equilibrium point where the outflow of gas, density, magnetic field, and other factors counterbalance the pull of gravity towards the center.
All of those things are in consideral flux, depending on just where the ship is parked. On top of that, the Sun is constantly churning, with its layers bouncing up and down with the cycles of the fusion reaction far below.
At best, you can hope for a ship capable of withstanding the rigors of an impossible environment to oscillate around some equilibrium altitude, assuming it's caught in some kind of doldrums and not pulled down in some horrible suction or shot back into space.
Ah... Thank you! I wasn't sure if the material was absorbing it or just passing it along. (I never studied superconductors in detail, obviously.
) I only kind of recall something about the temperature being lower than the critical temperature, so again, a bit of confusion there - that's why you mention "briefly superconducting", because all that energy converts it to a normal conductor 
:sMintmaster
Veteran
No, 109 giganewtons per kilogram would be 10 billion G's. 109 giganewtons is the force exerted on the Enterprise in his example, which is a 400,000 ton behemoth.
You put a 1 kg block of whatever on the surface of the sun, and the force of gravity is under 300 Newtons. If that's enough to cause fusion, I could create it with my bare hands. Hmmm, time to become a fusion hurling supervillian and take over the world...
You couldn't really 'land' in the surface anymore than you can land on a liquid. The surface is turbulent.
However, if the question is if it's possible to reach equilibrium and be held up by the Sun, the answer is yes. Simply build a solar sail with the right area and weight so that the gravitational attraction is precisely balanced by radiation pressure or solar wind. It's not really landing, more like floating, being buoyed by a pressure gradient, and you'd have to stay far away from the Sun to avoid destroying your sail as well as keeping gravity weak enough, and you'd have to probably have dynamic adjustments constantly tweaking the sail so as to maintain position.
Well, to be fair, I haven't done the calculations, so the resulting sail might have to be enormous and be unbelievably light, kind like Robert Forward's interstellar laser sails.
However, if the question is if it's possible to reach equilibrium and be held up by the Sun, the answer is yes. Simply build a solar sail with the right area and weight so that the gravitational attraction is precisely balanced by radiation pressure or solar wind. It's not really landing, more like floating, being buoyed by a pressure gradient, and you'd have to stay far away from the Sun to avoid destroying your sail as well as keeping gravity weak enough, and you'd have to probably have dynamic adjustments constantly tweaking the sail so as to maintain position.
Well, to be fair, I haven't done the calculations, so the resulting sail might have to be enormous and be unbelievably light, kind like Robert Forward's interstellar laser sails.
Huh, you're right.No, 109 giganewtons per kilogram would be 10 billion G's. 109 giganewtons is the force exerted on the Enterprise in his example, which is a 400,000 ton behemoth.
You put a 1 kg block of whatever on the surface of the sun, and the force of gravity is under 300 Newtons. If that's enough to cause fusion, I could create it with my bare hands. Hmmm, time to become a fusion hurling supervillian and take over the world...
That's really surprising. I would have expected the gravity at the edge of the suns atmophere to be much higher. Ah well, if the crushing won't get you, then the frying will.
Gravity would be stronger if so much of the sun wasn't so diffuse.
It's a long way from the center of the sun, though just how far depends on what you want to count as the "surface".
It's a long way from the center of the sun, though just how far depends on what you want to count as the "surface".
You couldn't make a molecule (even in principle) strong enough to withstand being turned into a plasma. The intermolecular bonds (covalent bonds, VanderWaal forces and so forth) are an EM effect, and will be vastly trumped by the immense thermodynamic pressure that can start nuclear fusion. You could probably stay out of the radius where your perfect metal would start giving way (and its complicated where exactly that critical radius would be), but rather than buoying you'd probably be subject to local turbulence as the sun has a very strong magnetic field that interacts nontrivially with its surroundings. Complicated eqns of motion, whatever they are (you could ask a specialist).
So you'd have to give your Enterprise a force field (say with an energy density at least on the order of the mass of the sun E ~ Mc^2) if you want to go further. Except energy gravitates, so rather than going through the sun, you'd rather rip it asunder.
Not exactly what Cpt Kirk probably had in mind, but there you have it.
So you'd have to give your Enterprise a force field (say with an energy density at least on the order of the mass of the sun E ~ Mc^2) if you want to go further. Except energy gravitates, so rather than going through the sun, you'd rather rip it asunder.
Not exactly what Cpt Kirk probably had in mind, but there you have it.
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