[Boodysaspie]

IIRC, one the strongest objections to the then new science of Geology and its claims that the Earth is millions, if not billions, of years old was that no-one could explain how the sun could provide heat and light for such a long time using the fuels of the time.

The discovery of nuclear fusion cleared that one up, and RET now says that

 - the sun is 150,000,000km away and 1,400,000km in diameter;
 - the "atmospheric pressure" at the centre is high enough to start a fusion reaction of hydrogen into helium;
 - The reaction runs at a temperature of 15,000,000K and releases 400,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 watts of energy.

FET says the sun is 4,800km away and 50km in diameter. Can anyone explain the rest rationally and possibly cogently?

[devils advocate]

I want to say it's solar powered but the risk of a warning from the frog prevents me..... I do think that the empirical need of the zetetics means that the inner workings of either a FE or RE sun can only be answered with an "not known" reply. I'd be surprised if any FE offers any alternative to this but please do!
From a belief system that has members who have proposed the moon to be a projection or eclipses to be caused by an invisible "shadow" object who knows what answers they have to explain the root of the suns awesome power.

[Boodysaspie]

Funnily enough, solar was third on my list 

I ruled out fossil fuels (don't burn long enough, no smoke, certainly not enough photons) and fission (a whole new meaning to the term "sunburn") so, as Sherlock Holmes once said, " ... when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth".

Unless, of course, there's an as-yet-undiscovered type of energy in clear view that no-one has thought to investigate? Maybe the oil companies, not NASA, are behind this.

[Pickel B Gravel]

One theory is that the sun is simply a ball of fire that continues to thrive because of available hydrogen gas, which is flammable and provides the essential fuel. It's the result of chemical reaction / combustion. This explanation explains known things about the earth. For example, during combustion, hydrogen is combined with oxygen. We know that the earth's surface is around 70 to 76 % h2o, and it is believed earth's atmosphere had more hydrogen in the past.

[Boodysaspie]

One theory is that the sun is simply a ball of fire that continues to thrive because of available hydrogen gas, which is flammable and provides the essential fuel. It's the result of chemical reaction / combustion. This explanation explains known things about the earth. For example, during combustion, hydrogen is combined with oxygen. We know that the earth's surface is around 70 to 76 % h2o, and it is believed earth's atmosphere had more hydrogen in the past.

This is what I love about this forum. Ask a reasoned, logical question, and if you're lucky, a "theory" comes back, which gives me a starting point to learn more about the world.

I don't know how to do the maths to prove that a hydrogen sun, 32 miles in diameter, will burn too quickly to heat the Earth for 4.6 billion years.

But there are a couple of other characteristics of burning hydrogen which you should include in your theory:

1) Hydrogen burns with a blue flame which is almost invisible in daylight. Hydrogen "sunlight" isn't light.

2) Hydrogen does not radiate much infra red energy but it does radiate ultra-violet energy. Therefore it isn't hot, but it will cause sunburn. Think about how a sunbed works.

Chemical plant sensors which detect hydrogen fires don't measure heat or light, because a hydrogen flame isn't hot or bright. Instead they use ultra-violet CCTV.

I would seriously be very grateful to anyone who could point me to a noobs guide on hydrogen combustion, or explain for how long a 32-mile diameter ball would burn in oxygen.

[Pickel B Gravel]

Boodysaspie, I only mentioned one theory. Regardless, let me respond to some things that you typed:

1) Hydrogen burns with a blue flame which is almost invisible in daylight. Hydrogen "sunlight" isn't light.

In theory. In reality, impurities can cause it to be yellow.

"The flame may appear yellow if there are impurities in the air like dust or sodium" ( https://www.h2tools.org/bestpractices/h2introduction/hazards/flames).

2) Hydrogen does not radiate much infra red energy but it does radiate ultra-violet energy. Therefore it isn't hot, but it will cause sunburn. Think about how a sunbed works.

And...? It doesn't dispute the theory. You still admit some infrared energy is emitted. You simply asked "what is the source of the Sun's energy?". I found this to be ambiguous and wasn't sure whether you were you asking about the Sun's input energy or about its output (radiant) energy. I assumed you were asking about the Sun's input energy, and I offered one theory to explain how the sun can thrive. If you were asking about the output energy / heat of the sun, I would have then possibly answered differently.

[Pickel B Gravel]

Boodysaspie,

Let me elaborate on my previous comment. You asked "what is the source of the Sun's energy?". That is not the same as asking "how can the sun produce enough heat to warm the earth?". I answered your question well regardless if you were asking about the Sun's output or input energy (though I assumed you were asking about the input energy). If you were asking how the sun can produce enough output energy to warm the earth, you should have phrased it that way. Because not all flat earth theorists necessarily believe the sun is the only heat source.

[Boodysaspie]

Pickel,

I've decided that it's made out of gold because it's yellow and shiny, and that's good enough for me.

[S.RAJASEKHARANNAIR]

THANK YOU.
I am a real and perfect  geocentrist.
The Sun god is not a mere star.According to Hindu mythology he is able,noble and visual god.He has many powers or possessing many abilities.He is moving around the earth in a time bound manner.The earth is not only a flat one but also a static one.Therefore the artificial planets can moving around the earth.
Again thanking you.
S.RajasekharanNair

[JohnAdams1145]

I don't know how to do the maths to prove that a hydrogen sun, 32 miles in diameter, will burn too quickly to heat the Earth for 4.6 billion years.

Don't worry. I do, and at 27 million K, the thermal energy of the hydrogen is far more than any chemical energy you could get out of it. I did an analysis of the thermal energy and a 64 mile wide Sun would die in 31 years if it were just living off the thermal energy. I posted about this in "The Flat Earth Sun," but here it goes:

Optics proves a tricky thing for FE theorists because it's so easy to just claim "distortion" or "perspective" or "fisheye lens" and dismiss the whole argument without budging from it. They'll claim that the atmosphere refracts the light upward not unlike how a mirage works. Of course, this is a load of garbage because mirages form under special conditions, none of which are present enough to cause the shadow effect.

There's a far easier debunk of the whole damn idea that the Sun is 32 miles in radius (if you're talking about diameter, it obviously gets worse). Doing a basic thermal energy calculation, one finds that the Sun at 32 miles in radius would run out of energy to give out in a cosmic heartbeat. The average kinetic energy of the gas particles in the Sun is capped by the highest temperature - 15 million K. This gives a value of about 3 x 10^-16 J per particle. Now one will quickly find that if gravity doesn't exist, how will the Sun hold itself together? Oh right, one of Tom Bishop's magical (and much weaker) "gravitation" forces. I'll be far more lenient and just assume that it holds itself together. We find that the proposed Sun has a volume of 5.58708453 × 10^14 liters. Now assuming that the proposed Sun has a density of 10 g / cm^3 (to give FE its best shot, we'll let the proposed Sun be denser than iron, although it can't reach this density). We find, then, that the proposed Sun has a mass of 5.58708453 × 10^15 kilograms. This yields 3.364621 × 10^42 hydrogen atoms floating about. So the proposed Sun has at most 1.0093863 x 10^27 J of thermal energy. Unfortunately, according to the Stefan-Boltzmann Law (where we assume that the surface temperature of the proposed Sun is 5000 K), this Sun has to radiate about 1.18 x 10^18 W of power. This means that the proposed Sun would only last at most 1 billion seconds, which a massive... 31 years. Your Sun would be dead in 31 years if it didn't have some way of replenishing its energy. This obviously contradicts the evidence that people have been alive for much longer than that and have seen the Sun (even if you don't buy the Earth is 4 billion years old).

Now that that long and arduous calculation is over, let's talk about what it means. FE theorists now have three choices:
Choice 1: Nuclear fusion powers the Sun so the calculation above is invalid. (This is true, and I'll address this below.)
Choice 2: Stefan-Boltzmann is bullshit (no it isn't, test it), your math is wrong (how?), or I don't understand it (well, I'll explain it to you, but that doesn't make this invalid), or some unquantified variant of "distortion"
Choice 3: Some other magical form of dark energy / quantum woo that I really don't even understand <insert Casimir> / relativity / wormholes / chemical reaction makes the energy inside the Sun. Remember Tom in the Occam's Razor thread, saying how FE theory was simpler than RE theory (hint: with all of the patches, it isn't! Of course if you don't understand basic physics and math and are inclined to believe conspiracies...)? So let me get this straight. You've already invented 3 forces (UA, gravitation #1, gravitation #2) to justify what can obviously be seen as an inability to comprehend scale; spheres locally look flat. You've already proposed physically impossible stuff, like things orbiting in circles above a disk (do you even understand how orbits work?). You've given a map whose distances do not line up with real world travel (direct flights from Sydney to Johannesburg). You've even asserted that the measured distances between cities are inaccurate! And now you're going to make up a new way of generating energy out of seemingly nothing?
Choice 4: Write it in. It probably rejects a ton of tested science.

So the only reasonable choice is #1 (or maybe I made a mistake, but 31 years is pretty hard to get to 4 billion years just by correcting mistakes). But this doesn't work. Nuclear fusion cannot occur with a star that is only 32 miles wide; it would have to be about twice the size of Jupiter to have a chance. The pressures and resulting temperatures just wouldn't be enough.  We have tested and verified that the conditions for nuclear fusion are as high as we believe they are. These are the fundamental principles behind thermonuclear weapons, and also behind much of the fusion research (and hobbyism) today. People have built homemade nuclear fusion machines. These have demonstrated that nuclear fusion requires high temperatures. As I've said a thousand times before, if the pressure of the "gravitation" (and Tom Bishop implies this is far weaker than normal gravity) of the proposed Sun were enough to initiate thermonuclear fusion, I could build weapons of mass destruction in my backyard with some high explosive and tap water. Sorry, FE theorists, but asserting the Sun is 32 miles in radius is living in fantasy-land.

Pickel, hydrogen needs oxygen to burn. It's not going to happen in the Sun, which doesn't contain much oxygen (confirmed by spectral analysis). But as I said anyway, at 27 million K, hydrogen has far more thermal energy than chemical energy, and even with an overestimation of the density of the hydrogen in the Sun and therefore an overestimation of the thermal energy of the Sun, it can't even last for one person's lifetime.

[AATW]

THANK YOU.
I am a real and perfect  geocentrist.
The Sun god is not a mere star.According to Hindu mythology he is able,noble and visual god.He has many powers or possessing many abilities.He is moving around the earth in a time bound manner.The earth is not only a flat one but also a static one.Therefore the artificial planets can moving around the earth.
Again thanking you.
S.RajasekharanNair

Highlighted the word which is the slight chink in the armour of that argument. Hope that helps.

[Pickel B Gravel]

JohnAdams1145,

Don't worry. I do, and at 27 million K, the thermal energy of the hydrogen is far more than any chemical energy you could get out of it. I did an analysis of the thermal energy and a 64 mile wide Sun would die in 31 years if it were just living off the thermal energy.

Are you factoring in natural electrolysis that separates h2o to provide the Sun with reusable oxygen and hydrogen?

Pickel, hydrogen needs oxygen to burn. It's not going to happen in the Sun, which doesn't contain much oxygen (confirmed by spectral analysis).

Well, as I've said in past posts, I don't believe government space agencies are really space agencies. I believe they're a cover to embezzle money. Do you have analyses of the Sun from independent groups?

But as I said anyway, at 27 million K, hydrogen has far more thermal energy than chemical energy, and even with an overestimation of the density of the hydrogen in the Sun and therefore an overestimation of the thermal energy of the Sun, it can't even last for one person's lifetime.

Are you factoring into your equation new recurrent supplies of hydrogen and oxygen provided by natural electrolysis of h2o?

[Pickel B Gravel]

Pickel,

I've decided that it's made out of gold because it's yellow and shiny, and that's good enough for me.

You're using the appeal to ridicule logical fallacy. Why? Because youcant dispute what I have typed as a plausible flat earth model of the Sun.

[JohnAdams1145]

JohnAdams1145,

Don't worry. I do, and at 27 million K, the thermal energy of the hydrogen is far more than any chemical energy you could get out of it. I did an analysis of the thermal energy and a 64 mile wide Sun would die in 31 years if it were just living off the thermal energy.

Are you factoring in natural electrolysis that separates h2o to provide the Sun with reusable oxygen and hydrogen?

Pickel, hydrogen needs oxygen to burn. It's not going to happen in the Sun, which doesn't contain much oxygen (confirmed by spectral analysis).

Well, as I've said in past posts, I don't believe government space agencies are really space agencies. I believe they're a cover to embezzle money. Do you have analyses of the Sun from independent groups?

But as I said anyway, at 27 million K, hydrogen has far more thermal energy than chemical energy, and even with an overestimation of the density of the hydrogen in the Sun and therefore an overestimation of the thermal energy of the Sun, it can't even last for one person's lifetime.

Are you factoring into your equation new recurrent supplies of hydrogen and oxygen provided by natural electrolysis of h2o?

So in your complete lack of understanding of physics and chemistry, you're going to throw out the law of conservation of energy? That law has been proven millions of times over because it applies in virtually everything we have today, from heat management to power distribution, etc. Electrolysis of H2O requires more energy than you get from burning the hydrogen and oxygen. You really can't be much of a genius if you don't even know that basic fact, proven in labs everywhere and industrial electrolysis. Otherwise I could create energy for free by setting up a loop (oh wait, that's your scheme here; I bet you don't know how nuclear fusion gets its energy).

Again, I'll say that the chemical energy is not anything compared to the thermal energy. You should study some basic chemistry before invoking terms like "electrolysis" which you clearly don't understand on even a basic level, and I've only taken introductory physics (although at quite a respectable institution). The enthalpy of combustion of hydrogen with oxygen is -286 kJ / mol. The thermal energy of the hydrogen at 27 million K is 180664 kJ / mol. You clearly have no idea what you're talking about when you invoke electrolysis.


You also have no idea what spectral analysis is if you think only space agencies can conduct it. You must be suffering from some extreme Dunning-Kruger right here. Literally anyone can do spectral analysis just by looking at the light spectrum. If you have no idea how to do this, you can do it with a CD (for ordinary light sources; I don't know if this particular technique works with the Sun): https://petapixel.com/2015/10/30/you-can-use-a-cd-to-view-the-color-spectrum-of-your-light-sources/. In any case, you should be careful about eye damage. Perhaps you'd like to take a look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraunhofer_lines to see how we determine the elements in the Sun using dark lines in the spectrum (the frequency of the light is related to the emission/absorption of light through electron energy levels).

[Pickel B Gravel]

JohnAdams1145,

Don't worry. I do, and at 27 million K, the thermal energy of the hydrogen is far more than any chemical energy you could get out of it. I did an analysis of the thermal energy and a 64 mile wide Sun would die in 31 years if it were just living off the thermal energy.

Are you factoring in natural electrolysis that separates h2o to provide the Sun with reusable oxygen and hydrogen?

Pickel, hydrogen needs oxygen to burn. It's not going to happen in the Sun, which doesn't contain much oxygen (confirmed by spectral analysis).

Well, as I've said in past posts, I don't believe government space agencies are really space agencies. I believe they're a cover to embezzle money. Do you have analyses of the Sun from independent groups?

But as I said anyway, at 27 million K, hydrogen has far more thermal energy than chemical energy, and even with an overestimation of the density of the hydrogen in the Sun and therefore an overestimation of the thermal energy of the Sun, it can't even last for one person's lifetime.

Are you factoring into your equation new recurrent supplies of hydrogen and oxygen provided by natural electrolysis of h2o?

So in your complete lack of understanding of physics and chemistry, you're going to throw out the law of conservation of energy? That law has been proven millions of times over because it applies in virtually everything we have today, from heat management to power distribution, etc. Electrolysis of H2O requires more energy than you get from burning the hydrogen and oxygen. You really can't be much of a genius if you don't even know that basic fact, proven in labs everywhere and industrial electrolysis. Otherwise I could create energy for free by setting up a loop (oh wait, that's your scheme here; I bet you don't know how nuclear fusion gets its energy).

Again, I'll say that the chemical energy is not anything compared to the thermal energy. You should study some basic chemistry before invoking terms like "electrolysis" which you clearly don't understand on even a basic level, and I've only taken introductory physics (although at quite a respectable institution). The enthalpy of combustion of hydrogen with oxygen is -286 kJ / mol. The thermal energy of the hydrogen at 27 million K is 180664 kJ / mol. You clearly have no idea what you're talking about when you invoke electrolysis.


You also have no idea what spectral analysis is if you think only space agencies can conduct it. You must be suffering from some extreme Dunning-Kruger right here. Literally anyone can do spectral analysis just by looking at the light spectrum. If you have no idea how to do this, you can do it with a CD (for ordinary light sources; I don't know if this particular technique works with the Sun): https://petapixel.com/2015/10/30/you-can-use-a-cd-to-view-the-color-spectrum-of-your-light-sources/. In any case, you should be careful about eye damage. Perhaps you'd like to take a look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraunhofer_lines to see how we determine the elements in the Sun using dark lines in the spectrum (the frequency of the light is related to the emission/absorption of light through electron energy levels).

What is it that you're trying to convey exactly? Are you asserting that not enough thermal energy of the Sun (if the Sun is oxyhydrogen combustion) could sustain the internal temperature requisite of the combustion to occur and persist? Because if that is what you originally tried to convey, then I'll tell you what I told Boodysaspie: you should have phrased it that way.
And, no, I didn't use the term "electrolysis" incorrectly, nor did I use it to explain away thermal energy necessary to sustain the Sun. You just weren't articulate when typing your original comment. I thought you meant how the Sun is refueled. Please rephrase your point in a more articulate way.

[StinkyOne]

JohnAdams1145,

Don't worry. I do, and at 27 million K, the thermal energy of the hydrogen is far more than any chemical energy you could get out of it. I did an analysis of the thermal energy and a 64 mile wide Sun would die in 31 years if it were just living off the thermal energy.

Are you factoring in natural electrolysis that separates h2o to provide the Sun with reusable oxygen and hydrogen?

Pickel, hydrogen needs oxygen to burn. It's not going to happen in the Sun, which doesn't contain much oxygen (confirmed by spectral analysis).

Well, as I've said in past posts, I don't believe government space agencies are really space agencies. I believe they're a cover to embezzle money. Do you have analyses of the Sun from independent groups?

But as I said anyway, at 27 million K, hydrogen has far more thermal energy than chemical energy, and even with an overestimation of the density of the hydrogen in the Sun and therefore an overestimation of the thermal energy of the Sun, it can't even last for one person's lifetime.

Are you factoring into your equation new recurrent supplies of hydrogen and oxygen provided by natural electrolysis of h2o?

So in your complete lack of understanding of physics and chemistry, you're going to throw out the law of conservation of energy? That law has been proven millions of times over because it applies in virtually everything we have today, from heat management to power distribution, etc. Electrolysis of H2O requires more energy than you get from burning the hydrogen and oxygen. You really can't be much of a genius if you don't even know that basic fact, proven in labs everywhere and industrial electrolysis. Otherwise I could create energy for free by setting up a loop (oh wait, that's your scheme here; I bet you don't know how nuclear fusion gets its energy).

Again, I'll say that the chemical energy is not anything compared to the thermal energy. You should study some basic chemistry before invoking terms like "electrolysis" which you clearly don't understand on even a basic level, and I've only taken introductory physics (although at quite a respectable institution). The enthalpy of combustion of hydrogen with oxygen is -286 kJ / mol. The thermal energy of the hydrogen at 27 million K is 180664 kJ / mol. You clearly have no idea what you're talking about when you invoke electrolysis.


You also have no idea what spectral analysis is if you think only space agencies can conduct it. You must be suffering from some extreme Dunning-Kruger right here. Literally anyone can do spectral analysis just by looking at the light spectrum. If you have no idea how to do this, you can do it with a CD (for ordinary light sources; I don't know if this particular technique works with the Sun): https://petapixel.com/2015/10/30/you-can-use-a-cd-to-view-the-color-spectrum-of-your-light-sources/. In any case, you should be careful about eye damage. Perhaps you'd like to take a look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraunhofer_lines to see how we determine the elements in the Sun using dark lines in the spectrum (the frequency of the light is related to the emission/absorption of light through electron energy levels).

What is it that you're trying to convey exactly? Are you asserting that not enough thermal energy of the Sun (if the Sun is oxyhydrogen combustion) could sustain the internal temperature requisite of the combustion to occur and persist? Because if that is what you originally tried to convey, then I'll tell you what I told Boodysaspie: you should have phrased it that way.
And, no, I didn't use the term "electrolysis" incorrectly, nor did I use it to explain away thermal energy necessary to sustain the Sun. You just weren't articulate when typing your original comment. I thought you meant how the Sun is refueled. Please rephrase your point in a more articulate way.

98% of the Sun is made up of either hydrogen or helium. Why are we even talking about OH combustion? The stoichiometry is wrong for a self-sustaining reaction. It's fun to throw out ideas, but you need to think about them critically, as well.

And as far as you not trusting space agencies to telling us what the Sun is composed of, you're in luck! There happens to be a real genius chick who explained the spectra of the Sun (and stars in general) way back in the 1920s. Her name was Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin.

[Pickel B Gravel]

98% of the Sun is made up of either hydrogen or helium. Why are we even talking about OH combustion?

Just because oxygen isn't detectable in large quantity within the sun doesn't mean it isn't used by the sun. Oxygen may be obtained and quickly utilized and combined with hydrogen to form h2o to be released before detection. Even JohnAdams1145 admits that according to the spectral analysis that he holds so dear to his heart that trace amounts of oxygen exist in the Sun.

[PickYerPoison]

98% of the Sun is made up of either hydrogen or helium. Why are we even talking about OH combustion?

Just because oxygen isn't detectable in large quantity within the sun doesn't mean it isn't used by the sun. Oxygen may be obtained and quickly utilized and combined with h2o to be released before detection. Even JohnAdams1145 admits from the spectral analysis that he holds so near to his heart that trace amounts of oxygen exist in the Sun.

In order to form H2O, there must be one oxygen atom for every two hydrogen atoms, so wouldn't that mean that there would have to be more than trace amounts if it were to be used?

That is, the amount of hydrogen that can be used to make H2O is limited to twice the amount of oxygen. So trace amounts of oxygen means trace amounts of H2O at best. Meanwhile the rest of that hydrogen is not taking part in that process and instead would just be consumed - fire isn't very patient.

[JohnAdams1145]

Pickel B. Gravel -- I seriously can't believe you don't understand the basic physics I'm trying to throw out here. Usually I refrain from saying this stuff, but you clearly haven't read what I've said carefully or you just lack even a layman's fundamental understanding of the world. The Sun cannot be refueled by electrolysis because it takes at least the same amount of energy to get the oxygen back from the water than combusting the hydrogen and oxygen together gives. To put it even more simply, the fuel you suppose powers the Sun costs at least the same amount of energy to produce than it gives when it is burned. The Sun cannot gain energy by reversing a chemical reaction and then performing that same reaction. This is a fundamental law of thermodynamics.

And I'll insert my own, rather irrelevant quibble about terminology here, but I expect you to consider the merits of the rest of my argument; I'm only doing this so you realize that you don't know that much and should really do more study before ditching accepted science theory and making up your own. The splitting of water in the Sun would not be performed by electrolysis. It would be due to thermolysis in the extremely high temperatures inside. The fact that you don't know that means that you don't really know how electrolysis works.

I am saying that the thermal energy of the hydrogen atoms is 1000x MORE ENERGY than you could get from combusting them with oxygen (even if you had an unlimited supply of oxygen), and even that's not enough to keep the Sun alive for more than 30 years. What's so hard to understand about this logic?

It also seems you don't understand the energy-based argument I'm trying to make here. We know that the Sun releases X amount of energy per unit of time through the Stefan-Boltzmann Law. We know that the Sun has been here for at least a thousand years (actually, we know it's been here for billions, but I'm sure even the worst of the conspiracy theorists can agree it's been here for at least a thousand). However, no physical source of energy (nuclear fusion is unsustainable in a small sun) could keep a 64 or 32-mile wide Sun here for a thousand years if it were emitting the amount of energy that we know it emits due to the Stefan-Boltzmann Law.

PickYerPoison, you're right. The Sun doesn't have much oxygen at all, so it's implausible that it could be powered off the miniscule amount of oxygen there for any reasonable amount of time (we're effectively reducing the fuel to some 4% of the Sun's mass). But I've proven something far stronger than this: even the thermal energy of the hydrogen atoms (which is over 1000 times more than the energy you get from combusting each hydrogen with half an oxygen -- I apologize for a slight math error when I gave you the number of 180664 kJ / mol; it should be 361228, because that is the figure per mol of hydrogen atoms, while 286 kJ / mol is the figure per mol of hydrogen molecules) cannot sustain the Sun for more than 30 or so years. If we went with this so-called "genius girl"'s model, the Sun would barely last a year. I am as baffled as you that someone could even make us talk about combustion in the Sun. But this so-called "genius girl" insists that we can simply recycle the oxygen by reversing the very chemical reaction that we just performed and keep making free energy. And so we're stuck talking about it.

[Pickel B Gravel]

JohnAdams1145,

Pickel B. Gravel -- I seriously can't believe you don't understand the basic physics I'm trying to throw out here. Usually I refrain from saying this stuff, but you clearly haven't read what I've said carefully or you just lack even a layman's fundamental understanding of the world.

I think I don't understand what you're saying because you're not communicating effectively.

The Sun cannot be refueled by electrolysis because it takes at least the same amount of energy to get the oxygen back from the water than combusting the hydrogen and oxygen together gives. To put it even more simply, the fuel you suppose powers the Sun costs at least the same amount of energy to produce than it gives when it is burned. The Sun cannot gain energy by reversing a chemical reaction and then performing that same reaction. This is a fundamental law of thermodynamics.

Are you suggesting that I have proposed that natural electrolysis of h2o is powered by the Sun within the Sun? Because that is not what I have suggested. I have stated that the Sun collects available oxygen and hydrogen, combines them to produce h2o, and releases the h2o. The h2o is then separated by means of electrolysis outside of the Sun, where the two gases are once again absorbed by the Sun and combined into h2o.

The splitting of water in the Sun would not be performed by electrolysis. It would be due to thermolysis in the extremely high temperatures inside. The fact that you don't know that means that you don't really know how electrolysis works.

Same as above. When have I ever typed on here that electrolysis of h2o is produced IN the Sun? It sounds to me like you're resorting to a strawman fallacy here.

I am saying that the thermal energy of the hydrogen atoms is 1000x MORE ENERGY than you could get from combusting them with oxygen (even if you had an unlimited supply of oxygen), and even that's not enough to keep the Sun alive for more than 30 years. What's so hard to understand about this logic?

Your problem is assuming that my premise was that the Sun was a closed system that performed it's own electrolysis. That has never been my position.

PickYerPoison, you're right. The Sun doesn't have much oxygen at all, so it's implausible that it could be powered off the miniscule amount of oxygen there for any reasonable amount of time (we're effectively reducing the fuel to some 4% of the Sun's mass). But I've proven something far stronger than this: even the thermal energy of the hydrogen atoms (which is over 1000 times more than the energy you get from combusting each hydrogen with half an oxygen -- I apologize for a slight math error when I gave you the number of 180664 kJ / mol; it should be 361228, because that is the figure per mol of hydrogen atoms, while 286 kJ / mol is the figure per mol of hydrogen molecules) cannot sustain the Sun for more than 30 or so years. If we went with this so-called "genius girl"'s model, the Sun would barely last a year. I am as baffled as you that someone could even make us talk about combustion in the Sun. But this so-called "genius girl" insists that we can simply recycle the oxygen by reversing the very chemical reaction that we just performed and keep making free energy. And so we're stuck talking about it.

Because the oxygen is quickly combined with hydrogen and released as h2o. So not much oxygen is able to be detected in the Sun because it's been released.