Comments on: Why is the Sun so round?

By: Joseph G

Joseph G — Fri, 14 Sep 2012 17:32:53 +0000

@47 tracer: Assuming you made a scale model of the sun, yeah, it’d just go poof. If you somehow preserved the mass of the sun and squeezed it down in size, it’d heat up tremendously, and we’d be roasted. Of course, if you managed to squeeze it all the way down to the size of a basketball, it’d then be well within its Schwarzchild radius, and would immediately collapse into a black hole, again freezing us.

But yeah, either way, we’d be pretty much boned

By: Joseph G

Joseph G — Fri, 14 Sep 2012 17:22:47 +0000

@ Rob P:
*facepalm*
I’m SUCH a dumbass. I totally misread Phil’s post, THEN transposed arcseconds to minutes in my own brain to boot

Where’s my time machine, scientists!? Or, barring that, an anti-embarrassment pill?

By: tracer

tracer — Thu, 13 Sep 2012 21:22:45 +0000

But if you shrank the sun to the size of a basketball, the pressure at the core would no longer be sufficient to sustain nuclear fusion and we’d all freeze to death!

By: Rob P.

Rob P. — Thu, 13 Sep 2012 21:15:57 +0000

Joseph G – sun ~= moon ~= 0.5 degrees of arc = 30 arcminutes, right?

By: Matt B.

Matt B. — Thu, 13 Sep 2012 21:13:16 +0000

“Since the Sun is gaseous, it just kind of fades away with height, so if you try to get too precise you find a lot of wiggle room in the size.”

I would still like to see something on the definition of the surface of a giant star, since it has such a low density.

By: LeoSil

LeoSil — Thu, 13 Sep 2012 20:45:01 +0000

@Sir Eccles

While God “did” the sun, some say he also did the earth and eventually us humans. Perfect??? Ha.

By: Wolf Lorber

Wolf Lorber — Thu, 13 Sep 2012 19:46:24 +0000

Comments 12 & 29 may be right, but consider comment 31. An article on electron sphericity also appeared on Science Daily this year, citing same research.

By: Gary Ansorge

Gary Ansorge — Thu, 13 Sep 2012 19:19:49 +0000

26. HvP

“structural integrity field” is excellent. Just what we need for our space craft, that and clear sapphire(ie, transparent aluminum)..

31. Tara Li

Excellent!

Gary 7

By: Why is the Sun so round? – Discover Magazine « Paolo's blog

Why is the Sun so round? – Discover Magazine « Paolo's blog — Thu, 13 Sep 2012 18:47:45 +0000

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By: Chris

Chris — Thu, 13 Sep 2012 18:44:51 +0000

@37 Craig
Yes it does, every 11 years, that’s the sunspot cycle. That’s what is happening.

@35 Zippy
You may be interested in reading about the Helium Flash
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium_flash