Interesting that Sun burning coal age is well under billion years, while white dwarfs - which don't have corresponding reactions supporting the light emission - can live a trillion years.
Experts Doubt the Sun Is Burning Coal (1863)
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Re: Experts Doubt the Sun Is Burning Coal (1863)
#12That passage really brings into perspective how old Scientific American is, or maybe how little ago it must've been that the composition of the sun was discovered. This was during the American Civil War.
https://zenodo.org/record/1429642#.XrC1NCUpDDs It wasn’t until 1920 that the first paper suggesting it could be nuclear fusion was published.
Re: Experts Doubt the Sun Is Burning Coal (1863)
#13My personal favorite "old science" theory: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luminiferous_aether > Luminiferous aether or ether[1] ("luminiferous", meaning "light-bearing") was the postulated medium for the propagation of light.[2] It was invoked to explain the ability of the apparently wave-based light to propagate through empty space, something that waves should not be able to do. The assumption of a spatial plenum o…
It’s not all that far off from the electromagnetic field.
I think it is. Electric and magnetic fields exist in relationship with the processes that create and shape them. There is no prerequisite "background electromagnetic field" that is universally necessary for all of those processes, to begin with.
Re: Experts Doubt the Sun Is Burning Coal (1863)
#14This is really interesting, because we had a lot of the machinery in place to make accurate observations, but not a lot of the theory to link them together. We've known about sunspots since the Han dynasty and had accurate measurements of its size, distance, and temperature since the mid-1800s when spectroscopy became available. But it took Einstein himself and the legendary E=MC^2 equation to demonstrate a theoretic…
It was definitely a conundrum for scientists. Throughout the 19th century, evidence kept piling up from geology supporting longer and longer time periods for the age of the earth, but there was no known source of energy that could keep the sun burning for that much time.
Re: Experts Doubt the Sun Is Burning Coal (1863)
#15I had absolutely no idea that SA is so old. New Scientist - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Scientist is a mere whippersnapper.
It doesn't matter that the article is bollocks. It is reasoned bollocks. That is basically what science is all about! I would prefer if there was some more working shown to back up the article but it seems to imply that some might be available rather than just simple assertions.
We live in a world where some people genuinely seem to think that a newer version of a mobile phone comms medium can cause a disease that we know is caused by a virus. These same people seem to be aware of other viruses and bacteria and their effects just as well as any other layman. It is only this particular combination that is the current "conspiracy".
We need the likes of Scientific American to carry on their work of delivering the best descriptions of the rather odd workings of the world and the universe. They are what the rest of the media turn to when they need to cover something they don't understand.
The sun does not burn coal but frankly that is less embarrassing than admitting that our best theories can't explain where most of the sodding universe actually is. We are so advanced that we do not know where 85% of matter is hiding out. lol
Re: Experts Doubt the Sun Is Burning Coal (1863)
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s not all that far off from the electromagnetic field.
I think it is. Electric and magnetic fields exist in relationship with the processes that create and shape them. There is no prerequisite "background electromagnetic field" that is universally necessary for all of those processes, to begin with.
The primary difference is that the aether was supposed to provide a universal rest frame, which we now know doesn’t exist, but quantum field theory does posit that the field is a fundamental medium and the particles exist only as perturbations in that field.
Re: Experts Doubt the Sun Is Burning Coal (1863)
#17So did some argue that 5000 years was consistent with the Bible? [I did search, but DDG found nada.]
No, this article predates young Earth creationism, which is fairly modern, by 50-100 years.
Re: Experts Doubt the Sun Is Burning Coal (1863)
#18This is really interesting, because we had a lot of the machinery in place to make accurate observations, but not a lot of the theory to link them together. We've known about sunspots since the Han dynasty and had accurate measurements of its size, distance, and temperature since the mid-1800s when spectroscopy became available. But it took Einstein himself and the legendary E=MC^2 equation to demonstrate a theoretic…
Einstein did not determine that the sun was nuclear powered. That was Hans Bethe in 1939 (based on data produced by Bengt Strömgren).
Re: Experts Doubt the Sun Is Burning Coal (1863)
#19To me, I think what this demonstrates more than anything else is that the human mind is limited by the metaphors it has access to.
Leaving astronomy out of it— just look at the how we describe the mind — it’s been variously described as breath, or hydraulics, or clockworks and now as a computer.
Probably in 100 years we’ll be looking back at our primitive understanding of how the brain works and laughing.
They thought the sun might be made of coal because they were excited by the industrial revolution and the discover of thermodynamics and the steam engine and thought it might be the same phenomenon.
Re: Experts Doubt the Sun Is Burning Coal (1863)
#20This is really interesting, because we had a lot of the machinery in place to make accurate observations, but not a lot of the theory to link them together. We've known about sunspots since the Han dynasty and had accurate measurements of its size, distance, and temperature since the mid-1800s when spectroscopy became available. But it took Einstein himself and the legendary E=MC^2 equation to demonstrate a theoretic…
It was definitely a conundrum for scientists. Throughout the 19th century, evidence kept piling up from geology supporting longer and longer time periods for the age of the earth, but there was no known source of energy that could keep the sun burning for that much time.
Sounds a little like Dark Matter and Dark Energy today. Lots of evidence for it but nobody knows what it is.