Expert: Jayendra Upadhye - 10/13/2008

Question
Hi Jayendra

Could you sort out my vague thinking?

I understand, it's believed that ever since the big bang gravity has pulled clouds of gas in to form stars. I understand the temperatures within these stars are thought to produce nuclear fusion, which turns this gas into heavier elements. But, I’ve also read that after a solar flare, charged particles can leave the sun at close to the speed of light. How do we know that these particles weren't already travelling in the star at these speeds, in magnetic field loops, and that fusion takes place from high-speed collisions?

Thanks
David


Answer
Hi,
Good question.
Good because ..
1 - You have dared to ask something different with quite a bit of courage.
2 - It shows you dare to think independently.

Coming to your question, I hope you are referring to solar wind, which is a stream of protons and electrons, travelling at about 10 to 20% speed of light.

refer:-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_wind

This is the corona actually, which is a hydrodynamic flow which has a temperature of a million degrees at the solar surface. (Why a million, is a separate story you can read at wikipedia).

The sun's photosphere is at a cool 6000 degrees in comparison, where no fusion can occur. (neither can it occur in the corona at a mere million degrees).

The fusion reactions, chiefly the neutron gamma route occur deep within the metallic compacted hydrogen core, where even convective transfer of heat is not possible, and the energy is liberated as gamma ray photons (in a dark interior, as gamma rays dont constitute visible light) and neutrinoes!

The gamma part takes a million years to emerge as sunlight, loosing energy and frequency by multiple collisions with atoms of the dense packed metallic hydrogen core. (compton scattering).

The neutrinos stream out as though the core did not exist!

Now looking at the corona, its constituents *electrons and protons), and knowing the neutrinos dont come from there, but from within the core, and observing the various convective, radiative etc heat transfer zones existing within the sun, thanks to independent study of physical accoustic properties of solar surface (oscillations! like quakes are very periodic on the sun, in fact the whole surface has a flurry of longitudinal waves welloing up from within).

Look up wikipedia for sun, to know how far advanced is the understanding of the sun and the stars, of the astronomers.

regards
Jayen