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Photosphere Apocalypse
Asteroids make the merely kilometers thick photosphere Emit lots of IR as well as UV making earth as well as the entire planetary system autosterilizing | |
Wikipedia says the photosphere is just a few Kilometers thick; also it is a plasma Thus the quantity of matter associated with metallic asteroids are used to change the ouput spectra of the suns radiation
Just a little like Metal Halide lighting Metal asteroids are used to give the sun a much higher
radiation output; IR to melt the surfaces of the planets; UV plus possibly Gamma radiation to deep sterilize. The suns magnetic poles shift periodically possibly creating an opportunity to also shift the photosphere between IR n UV emission rich modes, alternating the liquefying of earths previous crust with freezing plus sterilizing radiation Killing all life plus keeping the area sterilized.
The possibility of high output UV plus Gamma radiation could actually extend the zone of death beyond earth to a number of other planets as well
On the bright side, if humanity were to vote against the apocalypse creating a brighter spectrum white light sun would actually increase the habitable time of the earth plus planetary system noticeably However, the Borg appear to vote destruction rather than mutiny.
photosphere
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photosphere
[beanangel, May 28 2010]
[link]
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slightly annoying time at the office recently |
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[-] sympathise, but it wouln't work: diffusion, distance, etc. |
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I really don't think it'd work. The sun is enormous compared to the rest of the solar system and unless you could fling several super-Jupiters in, it's not going to make a ha'p'orth of difference. |
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beanangel has an office job o_0 ? |
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We could maybe trawl through everyone's text on here and reconstruct each others' lives, but that's not really what this place is about. |
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OK, i want to do some mathematics. Assume the photosphere is a sphere one kilometre thick. It would then have an approximate volume of six thousand cubic megametres, a weird unit i've never thought about before. This compares to Earth's volume of almost thirteen hundred cubic megametres, so that's a quarter of the volume of the photosphere. The density of the photosphere is said to be various different things in various places on the internet by a whole load of clueless people like myself, so let's say one per mille of atmospheric density at sea level. So that gives it a mass of, er, a sixteen millionth of the mass of this planet, which is a hell of a lot. That's cube root is a third of one percent, meaning an asteroid of forty-two kilometres diameter made of an exotic substance. Hmm, dunno, sounds like it might make a difference. How much is the photosphere stirred up by convection from underneath? |
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Right, this is what i think the problems are with this. You would have to get enough of a particular substance together to make this which is not that concentrated anywhere. Once you'd made your asteroid, once you aimed it at the sun it would get torn apart at the Roche Limit. If the fragments continued to approach the photosphere, if it wasn't hot enough already to evaporate, it would then evaporate anyway before it got close to it. The gas would then be blown away by the solar wind (not sure about that). In order to get round that, you'd have to fire it at the sun very, very fast using a huge amount of energy, though you might be able to generate this velocity by "dropping" it at the sun from a very long way away. If you got to the photosphere, it would only stay there if the photosphere is stable at the surface and there is no convection beneath the photosphere, though magnetism might make some distance. There you go. |
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I think you're assuming that the Sun's radiation emanates from its heliographic centre. |
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I'm assuming it doesn't: most of the light rays going through your impact point are going to be off-radial. And most of the light that hits the Earth (or any object) doesn't come from a point on the Sun's surface directly between the object and the heliographical centre. |
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I don't think he is. I think he's expecting the object to diffuse through the photosphere, thereby changing its luminosity and spectrum. |
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... the *whole* photosphere ? tall order [ ] no clue. |
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But the whole photosphere isn't actually that big. It covers a large area but it's not very deep, apparently. |
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Actually, scratch that, it's supposed to be half a megametre deep. |
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