[Mark_1984]

I’ve heard that the sun is only 31 miles in diameter.  If this is the case, what’s it made of, what keeps it burning, and how long has it been burning, and how long will the fuel last ?

[Curious Squirrel]

I’ve heard that the sun is only 31 miles in diameter.  If this is the case, what’s it made of, what keeps it burning, and how long has it been burning, and how long will the fuel last ?

There has never been an FE answer to this question that I'm aware of other than the slightly silly (imo) suggestions of one user that the sun is replaced every so often by unknown methods and entities. Otherwise it's simply "we don't know and nether do you because you can't reproduce stellar fusion in a lab".

[3DGeek]

I’ve heard that the sun is only 31 miles in diameter.  If this is the case, what’s it made of, what keeps it burning, and how long has it been burning, and how long will the fuel last ?

There has never been an FE answer to this question that I'm aware of other than the slightly silly (imo) suggestions of one user that the sun is replaced every so often by unknown methods and entities. Otherwise it's simply "we don't know and nether do you because you can't reproduce stellar fusion in a lab".

Well, we can look at the spectrum of light from the sun and spectral lines from hydrogen fusion here on Earth and find that they both are the same - and that they match perfectly the spectral lines calculated from Quantum Theory.   So there is no doubt that sunlight is caused by the nuclear fusion of hydrogen.

Since we can calculate the total energy of sunlight arriving on Earth, we can deduce the total energy coming from the sun - from that we can use good old E=mc^2 to calculate the amount of mass being consumed in the sun every second.   For RET that number is 4 million tonnes per second.

HOWEVER:  Almost all of the energy produced by the RET sun shines out into deep space - only a VERY tiny fraction reaches Earth.   If FET were to be believed, then at most about half of the energy would be radiated out into space - and half onto the Earth - which would allow them to have a much MUCH smaller sun.   I haven't crunched the numbers to know what that would be.

BUT: There is a big problem.  To maintain hydrogen fusion requires immense pressures - and a 31 mile sun would have VASTLY too little gravity to keep the reaction contained with enough pressure to do that.   The smallest possible gravitationally contained fusion reaction requires an object about 15 times the mass of Jupiter - which would be about 100,000 miles across.

So if the FET sun is doing hydrogen fusion (as it's spectral lines clearly prove) - then there must be some force other than gravity keeping the hydrogen under sufficient pressure to maintain fusion.

We know the surface temperature of the sun is enough to vaporize any solid material - so it's not a physical barrier.   That leaves electromagnetism - an "electromagnetic bottle".   If the sun had that much electromagnetism and was only 3,000 miles away, compasses would point towards the sun and not towards the North pole.

Worse still, the spectrum of light from a vast number of stars ALSO matches that same exact spectrum...meaning that they too are nuclear fusion reactors.  Some stars are much larger or much smaller than the sun - so they are fusing other materials such as Helium or even Carbon (literally "diamonds in the sky")...their spectral lines match theoretical predictions too...but it's hard to do fusion of anything other than hydrogen...so a direct comparison cannot be made.

FET seems to suggest that stars are relatively small objects - smaller even than the sun...but it's one of those things where there is not widespread agreement among FE'ers - so maybe those are also 31 miles across - but much MUCH further away.

As usual, FET makes no sense and is inconsistent with all known science.

So magical pixies cause the sun to shine and it's probably made of particularly good Swiss chocolate?

[douglips]

I’ve heard that the sun is only 31 miles in diameter.  If this is the case, what’s it made of, what keeps it burning, and how long has it been burning, and how long will the fuel last ?

There has never been an FE answer to this question that I'm aware of other than the slightly silly (imo) suggestions of one user that the sun is replaced every so often by unknown methods and entities. Otherwise it's simply "we don't know and nether do you because you can't reproduce stellar fusion in a lab".

Well, we can look at the spectrum of light from the sun and spectral lines from hydrogen fusion here on Earth and find that they both are the same - and that they match perfectly the spectral lines calculated from Quantum Theory.   So there is no doubt that sunlight is caused by the nuclear fusion of hydrogen.

What does this mean? The sun is radiating essentially a blackbody spectrum, with absorbtion lines that indicate the presence of H and He - what's the "spectrum of hyrdogen fusion"? The fusion in the sun occurs deep within and all gamma rays are absorbed by the sun. What we see is just thermal emission from the photosphere.

Are you thinking of the neutrino flux? That confirms fusion of different kinds:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_neutrino

This image is particularly cool:

Since we can calculate the total energy of sunlight arriving on Earth, we can deduce the total energy coming from the sun - from that we can use good old E=mc^2 to calculate the amount of mass being consumed in the sun every second.   For RET that number is 4 million tonnes per second.

Given the solar constant of 1370 W/m^2, and the round-earth model radius of earth of 3959 miles (sorry I keep using miles for that, it's just stuck in my head), The total solar energy flux hitting the earth is:
pi * (3959 miles)^2 * 1370 W/m^2
which is
1.75 × 10^17 watts

If that's our E for E=mc^2, then we divide by c^2 to get mass annihilated per second:
(pi * (3959 miles)^2 * 1370 W/m^2)/c^2

This is about 2 kg/s.

That is NINE ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE DIFFERENT from what you got, so one of us is about as wrong as it's possible to be using math.
Maybe it's me? How did you calculate this?

HOWEVER:  Almost all of the energy produced by the RET sun shines out into deep space - only a VERY tiny fraction reaches Earth.   If FET were to be believed, then at most about half of the energy would be radiated out into space - and half onto the Earth - which would allow them to have a much MUCH smaller sun.   I haven't crunched the numbers to know what that would be.

BUT: There is a big problem.  To maintain hydrogen fusion requires immense pressures - and a 31 mile sun would have VASTLY too little gravity to keep the reaction contained with enough pressure to do that.   The smallest possible gravitationally contained fusion reaction requires an object about 15 times the mass of Jupiter - which would be about 100,000 miles across.

So if the FET sun is doing hydrogen fusion (as it's spectral lines clearly prove) - then there must be some force other than gravity keeping the hydrogen under sufficient pressure to maintain fusion.

We know the surface temperature of the sun is enough to vaporize any solid material - so it's not a physical barrier.   That leaves electromagnetism - an "electromagnetic bottle".   If the sun had that much electromagnetism and was only 3,000 miles away, compasses would point towards the sun and not towards the North pole.

According to this https://www.iter.org/mach/magnets - the strong magnets in that tokamak are about 12 Tesla, and measure 9 by 17 meters. So the distance at which the field is that strong is at most about 5 meters.

Magnetic fields vary with the cube of the distance (because they are dipole fields, not monopole fields) and so such a magnet at a distance of 3000 miles would give a field strength of
12 Tesla * (5 m)^3 / (3000 miles)^3 in gauss
1.33× 10^-13 gauss
(to check these calculations, the equations are formatted in a way you can just paste them into Google or Wolfram Alpha.)

But let's say we need a magnet that is just as strong, but big enough to exert that force field over the entire 31 mile size of the sun. So, it's generating 12 teslas at 15.5 miles (imagine a ring magnet exerting that force on the center of the sun.)

12 Tesla * (15.5 miles)^3 / (3000 miles)^3 in gauss
0.017 gauss

According to wikipedia, the Earth's magnetic field is at least .25 gauss, and up to .65 gauss, which is still more than enough for compasses to work.

Worse still, the spectrum of light from a vast number of stars ALSO matches that same exact spectrum...meaning that they too are nuclear fusion reactors.  Some stars are much larger or much smaller than the sun - so they are fusing other materials such as Helium or even Carbon (literally "diamonds in the sky")...their spectral lines match theoretical predictions too...but it's hard to do fusion of anything other than hydrogen...so a direct comparison cannot be made.

FET seems to suggest that stars are relatively small objects - smaller even than the sun...but it's one of those things where there is not widespread agreement among FE'ers - so maybe those are also 31 miles across - but much MUCH further away.

As usual, FET makes no sense and is inconsistent with all known science.

So magical pixies cause the sun to shine and it's probably made of particularly good Swiss chocolate?

Again, the spectral emissions from stars is a blackbody spectrum, not a "fusion" spectrum. It's been a while since my stellar astrophysics classes, but I'm pretty sure the modeling we have for other stars is based on our model for the sun. The only direct evidence we have for fusion in the sun is, if I understand right, neutrino flux at earth. Indirect evidence is us observing fusion here on earth and doing math to figure the conditions inside the sun and by extension, other stars.

---
EDIT: replaced an incorrect word with strikethrough + correct word.

[Mark_1984]

Ok, so we know it’s a fusion reaction from the neutrinos. We know the sun is made of helium and hydrogen from the spectral absorption lines. We know fusion requires extreme pressure and temperatures from experiment. But gravity is apparently a myth, so what provided the high temperature and pressure ?

[douglips]

It could be a giant tokamak, the magnetic field wouldn't distort compasses.

BUT - such a magnetic field should be detectable.
If I'm reading wikipedia right:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interplanetary_magnetic_field
the observed strength of the solar magnetic field at earth is 10−9 teslas, which is 100x more than expected from just what we think the solar magnetic field is.

The standard FAKE SCIENCE astronomy explanation is that the plasma ejected from the sun (the solar wind) adds to the magnetic field.

If we say that there is a tokamak in the heart of the sun generating the power, but then the surface of the sun is like the glass on an incandescent light bulb, that would fit within observations, I think. The tokamak couldn't be the entire size of the sun or we'd detect a much bigger magnetic field, but a smaller tokamak type thing would work.

See my above math - a tokamak 31 miles across would generate a detectable magnetic field much stronger than observed, but a small tokamak would not.

Of course, you could hypothesize some other containment. We haven't mastered fusion here on earth, after all.

[Mark_1984]

Doh !!  A tokamak is a device that contains a fusion reaction.  If that was what was in the sky, you'd see the torus, not the light.....

Not to mention, who built it in the first place.......

[Tom Bishop]

The 32 mile figure for the diameter of the sun was empirically determined by a previous generation of Zetetics. Experiments were devised to see what areas of the earth the sunlight was exactly parallel, and it was found to be exactly parallel in a 32 mile area directly beneath the sun.

I don't really have any other information on the methodology or who conducted it, and we have not really touched on that subject in recent years. If you would like more information look into the Flat Earth literature from Lady Blount's time and do some searches for the sun.

Edit: Here is some old correspondence which references the sun experiments, look for "32 miles". The actual experiments are probably explained elsewhere in Lady Blount's journal, The Earth.

[Mark_1984]

It's OK Tom, I'm not demanding your proof about the size of the sun.  I'm happy to take it on trust.  I just want a credible explanation as to how it works. 

[3DGeek]

Since we can calculate the total energy of sunlight arriving on Earth, we can deduce the total energy coming from the sun - from that we can use good old E=mc^2 to calculate the amount of mass being consumed in the sun every second.   For RET that number is 4 million tonnes per second.

Given the solar constant of 1370 W/m^2, and the round-earth model radius of earth of 3959 miles (sorry I keep using miles for that, it's just stuck in my head), The total solar energy flux hitting the earth is:
pi * (3959 miles)^2 * 1370 W/m^2
which is
1.75 × 10^17 watts

If that's our E for E=mc^2, then we divide by c^2 to get mass annihilated per second:
(pi * (3959 miles)^2 * 1370 W/m^2)/c^2

This is about 2 kg/s.

That is NINE ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE DIFFERENT from what you got, so one of us is about as wrong as it's possible to be using math.
Maybe it's me? How did you calculate this?
[/quote]

You are assuming that 100% of the energy generated by the sun arrives on Earth...my number is for the TOTAL output of the sun...and in RET, most of it misses the Earth completely.

This is why I said...

HOWEVER:  Almost all of the energy produced by the RET sun shines out into deep space - only a VERY tiny fraction reaches Earth.   If FET were to be believed, then at most about half of the energy would be radiated out into space - and half onto the Earth - which would allow them to have a much MUCH smaller sun.   I haven't crunched the numbers to know what that would be.

So your calculation about the FET sun needing 9 orders of magnitude less energy could certainly be correct.

Then you say:

But let's say we need a magnet that is just as strong, but big enough to exert that force field over the entire 31 mile size of the sun. So, it's generating 12 teslas at 15.5 miles (imagine a ring magnet exerting that force on the center of the sun.)

Oh no!  You don't get away with that one!  A "ring magnet" isn't going to compress the sun spherically - the hydrogen would just shoot out of the top and bottom of your ring - and you still don't get stellar fusion.   You'd need a "spherical magnet" or a magnetic monopole or something equally impossible!

Magnetic bottles that are used to constrain fusion reactions are toroidal for a reason...and I don't think even FET proponents want to claim that the sun is a torus!

A magnetic MONOPOLE (if such a thing could exist) would for sure be screwing up compass readings in significant ways.

[inquisitive]

The 32 mile figure for the diameter of the sun was empirically determined by a previous generation of Zetetics. Experiments were devised to see what areas of the earth the sunlight was exactly parallel, and it was found to be exactly parallel in a 32 mile area directly beneath the sun.

I don't really have any other information on the methodology or who conducted it, and we have not really touched on that subject in recent years. If you would like more information look into the Flat Earth literature from Lady Blount's time and do some searches for the sun.

Edit: Here is some old correspondence which references the sun experiments, look for "32 miles". The actual experiments are probably explained elsewhere in Lady Blount's journal, The Earth.

Clearly 32 miles is not correct, the measurements need to be repeated by you to confirm.

[Rounder]

The 32 mile figure for the diameter of the sun was empirically determined by a previous generation of Zetetics. Experiments were devised to see what areas of the earth the sunlight was exactly parallel, and it was found to be exactly parallel in a 32 mile area directly beneath the sun.

If round earth proponents are not allowed to use things determined by previous people as evidence, then neither are you.  Someone in FE should do the experiment again; with more modern equipment one could surely expect more accuracy, right?

The actual experiments are probably explained elsewhere in Lady Blount's journal, The Earth.

• Why is “probably” good enough for you?
• More probable: the “actual experiments” never happened at all.

[douglips]

Doh !!  A tokamak is a device that contains a fusion reaction.  If that was what was in the sky, you'd see the torus, not the light.....

Not to mention, who built it in the first place.......

God built it, silly.

Incandescent light bulbs have a filament that's a little coily wire, but you can only see it if the glass is transparent. If the tokamak is contained in a 31 mile diameter frosted glass ball/lens, then you wouldn't see the torus.

[Mark_1984]

Ok,  good reply.  So we have a transparent tokamak that contains a torus of helium/hydrogen plasma, inside a frosted glass 31 mile sphere.  We’re using 2kg per second.  How much plasma would a 30 mile diameter tokamak contain ?

[douglips]

You are assuming that 100% of the energy generated by the sun arrives on Earth...my number is for the TOTAL output of the sun...and in RET, most of it misses the Earth completely.

Ah yes, I misread what you were doing. I also get your 4.4 million tonnes/s answer if I multiply out to a sphere 1 AU in radius.

This is why I said...

HOWEVER:  Almost all of the energy produced by the RET sun shines out into deep space - only a VERY tiny fraction reaches Earth.   If FET were to be believed, then at most about half of the energy would be radiated out into space - and half onto the Earth - which would allow them to have a much MUCH smaller sun.   I haven't crunched the numbers to know what that would be.

So your calculation about the FET sun needing 9 orders of magnitude less energy could certainly be correct.

Yeah, the math I was doing was the exact math you hadn't done.
We were both right, we were just solving different problems.

Then you say:

But let's say we need a magnet that is just as strong, but big enough to exert that force field over the entire 31 mile size of the sun. So, it's generating 12 teslas at 15.5 miles (imagine a ring magnet exerting that force on the center of the sun.)

Oh no!  You don't get away with that one!  A "ring magnet" isn't going to compress the sun spherically - the hydrogen would just shoot out of the top and bottom of your ring - and you still don't get stellar fusion.   You'd need a "spherical magnet" or a magnetic monopole or something equally impossible!

Magnetic bottles that are used to constrain fusion reactions are toroidal for a reason...and I don't think even FET proponents want to claim that the sun is a torus!

A magnetic MONOPOLE (if such a thing could exist) would for sure be screwing up compass readings in significant ways.

You're right, "ring magnet" was the wrong terminology. I was thinking a tokamak/torus.

The way to get around the shape of the sun not being a torus is to have the tokamak inside a sphere of frosted glass, like an incandescent light bulb.

It just has to be a kind of glass that doesn't melt, some kind of magical space glass. Maybe it can be made of the same stuff the "firmament" is made out of.

[3DGeek]

The way to get around the shape of the sun not being a torus is to have the tokamak inside a sphere of frosted glass, like an incandescent light bulb.

It just has to be a kind of glass that doesn't melt, some kind of magical space glass. Maybe it can be made of the same stuff the "firmament" is made out of.

Well, those few FE'ers who believe in "The Firmament" are typically the biblical ones - and the bible says it's made of water...so I'm guessing not that!

[JustHereForThisQ]

I want a FE to explain why the north pole, if at the center, is so cold as well as the south pole edge

[gizmo910]

I want a FE to explain why the north pole, if at the center, is so cold as well as the south pole edge

In that model, it is equidistant from the equator, where the sun travels, so it is relatively the same conditions, just in a "smaller" area.