EVE General Discussion

I'm not really sure what the fundamental difference is between a planet and a spaceship orbiting a star (except for one being much bigger, obviously), but I'll take your word for it.

This reminds me of an old joke about a Politician announcing a new space exploration mission to land on the sun:

Someone asks him, "Say, isn't the sun very hot, won't you burn up when you land?"
The politician says "We thought of that, and that's why we're going to land at night."


Anyway, another Thomas Hurt thread.

How do you tell what season it is on the sun? I need to know when to put my tomatoes in the ground.

Except that it's not "consuming" all of that mass. It's converting the vast, vast majority of that mass into Helium and other elements.

What's more interesting is the amount of mass it's converting into energy.

About 4x10^9 kg/s is converted to energy and released according to Einstein's famous equation of Mass-Energy Equivalence.

That means that every 1.5x10^15 seconds, (47.5 million years) the Sun releases 1 Earth Mass as Energy.

Which means that, since the Earth was formed, 4.5 Billion years ago, the Sun has converted the mass of 95 Earths into Energy.

TIL that the Earth is only 3x as old as the US

Once upon a time, there was art. And then a man named Jackson Pollock decided that paint was an enema, and his canvas was a toilet.

Similarly, trolling was once an art, as well. Then people like the OP were given internet access, and the whole genre went to hell.

I'm really not that up to speed on art. I'm kind of no good at it. Apparently fingerpaint isn't made with real fingers.

I had the same problem with girl scout cookies.

How do vampires work in space?

I am assuming their blood boils same as humans, only it shoots out of their fangs like steam from a teapot.

Yes, I did not mean to imply the sun actually consumes it, I was aware it was converted to helium. Those are some really interesting facts and further adds to my mystification as to how little is going on inside comparatively speaking (to the size of the sun).

On the subject of conversion, another thing that kinda confuses me is all the converted helium should sink to the center of the sun, forcing the hydrogen to fuse in a sphere outside of the center, and as I understand it, helium fusion wont occur until the hydrogen supply is nearly out and the sun enters its red giant phase. I always wondered how the force of gravity and the force of fusion worked when the helium at the center shouldn't be involved in the process. Or does a significant amount of helium have to be created before it can sink past the fusing hydrogen at the center?



I'm aware of just how immense the sun is compared to Earth (a million times in volume, I believe), I just meant relative ot the size of the sun it is interesting how comparatively small the fusion core is. Nevertheless, I always love mind-blowing facts like this, thanks!