Theoretical physics, anyone else like it?

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Jenk
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Post by Jenk »

akimm wrote:Make no mistake friend, when the super nova happens, the entire milkey way will be reduced to dust if that. and possibly surronding galaxes.
You are greatly mistaken, our sun is not even big enough to implode, let alone create a super nova big enough to destroy our galaxy and those beyond. Our Solar System will be left with a grey dwarf and nothing else. The planets will be able to escape the now much lesser pull of gravity from the star (as a lot of mass will be lost during the collapse) and Earth (+ other planets) will whistle off into the oblivion, free from their orbit.
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Post by malcolmboston »

Jenk wrote:
akimm wrote:Our Solar System will be left with a grey dwarf and nothing else. The planets will be able to escape the now much lesser pull of gravity from the star (as a lot of mass will be lost during the collapse) and Earth (+ other planets) will whistle off into the oblivion, free from their orbit.
incorrect, earth will be burnt to a crisp and destroyed, basically because our Sun is a dying star and ever expanding, it will get too close to us and disintegrate us, if my memory serves me rightly its roughly 3 billion years off (i cba googling)

Space is one of the most fascinating subjects
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akimm
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Post by akimm »

malcolmboston

I didn't say it was a gray dwarf, it was Jenk, I said the sun will first destroy mostly everything around it if not everything, then eventually collapse in on itself creating a blackhole which will finish off whatever wasn't vaporized.

Thanks for the validation though, Jenk had me questioning myself!
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Jenk
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Post by Jenk »

Guys.. the Sun is far from being big enough to cause an implosion.

I did forget about the "red giant" phase, the Sun will expand and will reach as far as Earth, but beyond us will be out of it's reach.

It will 150%, most definitely not cause a super nova and will 200% definitely not form a black hole, it is simply not big enough to do that.

See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackhole# ... cal_theory
Since the Earth has a mean radius of 6371 km, its volume would have to be reduced 4 × 1026 times to collapse into a black hole. For an object with the mass of the Sun, the Schwarzschild radius is approximately 3 km, much smaller than the Sun's current radius of about 696,000 km. It is also significantly smaller than the radius to which the Sun will ultimately shrink after exhausting its nuclear fuel, which is several thousand kilometers. More massive stars can collapse into black holes at the end of their lifetimes.
and here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun#Life_cycle
The Sun does not have enough mass to explode as a supernova. Instead, in 4-5 billion years, it will enter a red giant phase, its outer layers expanding as the hydrogen fuel in the core is consumed and the core contracts and heats up. Helium fusion will begin when the core temperature reaches about 3×108 K. While it is likely that the expansion of the outer layers of the Sun will reach the current position of Earth's orbit, recent research suggests that mass lost from the Sun earlier in its red giant phase will cause the Earth's orbit to move further out, preventing it from being engulfed. However, Earth's water and most of the atmosphere will be boiled away.
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Post by alex.barylski »

I love wikipedia :P
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Post by akimm »

However, what of peripherals of the different planets, satellites, moons however you wish to call it, will then be altered in their gravitational coordinates, because the object they orbit(the given planet) will be offset. thus we now have possible collisions of those given planets, perhaps? I mean its all hypothesis, but something would have to happen, the sun gravitational force would be altered. What might happen if not this?

Just something to think of, feel free to debunk me, I love the arguments this fosters.
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Post by Chris Corbyn »

I know our sun is not even close enough to being big enough to cause a black hole. We covered that at University.
Last edited by Chris Corbyn on Tue Oct 24, 2006 12:38 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Luke »

...tip-toes through thread... ...man, I need to go back to school...
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Maugrim_The_Reaper
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Post by Maugrim_The_Reaper »

If the Sun goes nova, we can rest peacefully in the knowledge we died completely ignorant of Physics...;)

Nah, it's not even close to being big enough. It will swell, and eventually shrink to a white dwarf. The planets will likely either get spun off on their lonesome, or sucked into new irregular orbits. I doubt much will survive the event outside unless it makes it to the outer belts where Pluto spends most it's time sulking now that the powers-that-be have demoted it from being a Planet...

There's a topic - who agrees with Pluto's demotion?
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Jenk
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Post by Jenk »

akimm wrote:However, what of peripherals of the different planets, satellites, moons however you wish to call it, will then be altered in their gravitational coordinates, because the object they orbit(the given planet) will be offset. thus we now have possible collisions of those given planets, perhaps? I mean its all hypothesis, but something would have to happen, the sun gravitational force would be altered. What might happen if not this?

Just something to think of, feel free to debunk me, I love the arguments this fosters.
The Sun will lose a great deal of it's mass as it collapses into a White Dwarf, therefore it's gravitation pull will weaken significantly and those plantets that did not get engulfed will leave their orbits.
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Jenk
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Post by Jenk »

Maugrim_The_Reaper wrote:There's a topic - who agrees with Pluto's demotion?
I'm 50/50 with it.. firstly, it's Pluto.. I've known it as a planet since I first heard it's name..

But then, I've always belived that what defines a planet is a mass big enough to have it's own sattelite objects (e.g. Moon(s)) and afaik Pluto doesn't have any.
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Maugrim_The_Reaper
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Post by Maugrim_The_Reaper »

Pluto has Charon. Arguably it's not a moon but a double planet though since they revolve around a common centre of gravity...
The way I see it can orbit inside the orbit of Neptune - bringing it inside the recognised Solar System planets area. So it's a coin toss. It's hard to buy into a demotion with such a long history.
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Jenk
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Post by Jenk »

The other part to the whole Pluto debate is "Where did it come from?"

At the moment, from what I gather, the strongest standing theory is that Pluto was/is a very large comet that has been trapped in orbit, hence the eliptical orbit. Where as the rest of the planets have the theory they were formed from the Sun's dust clouds - Much like the recent evidence to suggest our own Moon is infact a clump of particles that have collected together after a huge comet/asteroid collided with Earth, forming a dust cloud or ring around Earth which has steadily clumped together.
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Maugrim_The_Reaper
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Post by Maugrim_The_Reaper »

I think Pluto is similar. The whole Kuiper belt beyond Neptune has enough mass for several planets. I would go with the theory it once was an early prototype planet that was torn apart from Neptune or Jupiter (planets used to be much farther out). Pluto formed from the remains. Of course with so much of the stuff out there Pluto is not alone - they have about 6 planetoids tagged I think, and Pluto is not even the biggest.

That's probably the biggest argument for the demotion - if Pluto is a planet, then anything the same size yet to be discovered would be labelled the same. And predictions are there are lots of Pluto like planetoids to discover that far out - they're near impossible to easily find since they're far out, cold (no Infrared emissions) and blanketed with dark crusts (no light reflection). Pluto is the exception - it's bright enough to have been spotted decades ago since it's orbit swings past Neptune so it's clear of the usual Kuiper dredge coating the surfaces of the other potential discoveries...
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akimm
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Post by akimm »

Reaper, I don't know that you can say pluto's size is specific to its involvment alone in the Kupier belt. I never heard people speculate about neptune being in a further orbital; however, with plutos proximity to kupier is suggestive to say the least. Plus I think Jenks said something about its orbit being conducive to its involment in this belt. I do agree there.

But still guys, have you heard anything about some theoretical physics, Muons, or Anti-matters implications, wormhole physics, branes or anything of the like?
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