How Close to the Sun?
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To be safe firing a human at the sun it would be best to do it at night
You just launched some of my coffee.
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Energy is emitted from the sun in varying quantities across a large part of the electro magnetic spectrum obviously including high intensity visible light. If you wanted to protect yourself from getting burnt up with a shield which somehow deflects it all then you also wouldn't be able to see the sun so it would kinda defeat the objective a little...
Oh the ironing.
Asking questions on a PC enthusiast forum and then READING the replies.
Must be a troll.
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Im not a troll, im not proud of how I didnt learn certain subjects at school... that was just how I felt as a nipper and couldnt be bothered. It probably relates to me not reading books... I re-iterate, books, as I used to read comics, magazines etc and now obviously as the net has grown, forum posts.
Its the short sharp snippets of info that stick, if I try and read a book, I get bored within a page... fictional or fact.
Without a doubt.
Many people forget that Cosmic Radiation (solar particles too) impact with our atmosphere constantly. These ultra-high energy collisions create what people have coined 'cosmic rays' (despite being muon particles) which pass straight through the planet and us. Chances of collisions with us are very rare, but if they did occur, this could go some way to explaining evolution/mutation.
One idea of how to actually go to the sun is covered in this book: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundiver
Am I the only one that's read any sci fi here???
Am I the only one that's read any sci fi here???
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Interestingly, the Solar Corona is hotter than the surface of the sun by a few hundred Kelvin - something which is not quite understood yet - so if one could get past the Corona, then they could technically get to the surface of the Sun. However, the intense radiation (and we're talking not just Visible/IR but UV and X-Ray here) as you get closer to the sun is something that our current technology wouldn't be able to cope with.
Remember that EM radiation intensity falls off as a function of 1/r^2 (inverse-square-law), so at a a distance of 1AU (roughly 1.5x10^{11} m) we are in a comfortable position - however every time you halve the distance to the Sun (in your space station), you receive 4 times as intense radiation. With this intensity-distance relationship, it is easy to see that once you start getting within just a few thousand kilometres of the Sun, things start to go badly for your health!
In-fact, a quick calculation shows that when you are 1500km from the Sun the intensity of radiation that you receive is approximately 1x10^{10} (i.e. 10 billion) times the amount you receive here on Earth. That is something which our current technology cannot really cope with, and would fry you pretty quickly.
Remember that EM radiation intensity falls off as a function of 1/r^2 (inverse-square-law), so at a a distance of 1AU (roughly 1.5x10^{11} m) we are in a comfortable position - however every time you halve the distance to the Sun (in your space station), you receive 4 times as intense radiation. With this intensity-distance relationship, it is easy to see that once you start getting within just a few thousand kilometres of the Sun, things start to go badly for your health!
In-fact, a quick calculation shows that when you are 1500km from the Sun the intensity of radiation that you receive is approximately 1x10^{10} (i.e. 10 billion) times the amount you receive here on Earth. That is something which our current technology cannot really cope with, and would fry you pretty quickly.
You could probably increase your knowledge about space 10 fold by simply watching the film mavity.
When there was matter for the conduction or convection. The shield you're talking about would have to be implausibly effective because of the levels of radiation involved (we're only here now because the Earth is very strongly shielded) and it would almost certainly be impervious to matter as well. It would have to be, since it must also protect against all the charged particles as well or your hypothetical human would be dead long before. So with this perfect shield in front of them, they'd have to be very slightly inside the sun to get instablasted by the conducted heat.
It's deadly outside the protection the Earth gives. If we ever do build a base on the moon or on Mars, it will almost certainly be underground because the surface is baked and frozen and irradiated. Spacesuits are a marvel of protection from several ways the universe will kill you.
Large gravitational bodies exert mavity on each other - the resultant effect is what is known as the 'roche limit' which defines the proximity in which a lesser orbital body can go to before being torn apart by gravitational and tidal forces.
You'd find that the Moon would likely be ripped asunder due to it's larger mavity and potentially delicate structure (it isn't condensed rock, it is full of fissures, caverns and has it's own geological/seismological stability issues with radioactive isotopes decaying etc). Same goes for Asteroids too.
Other Moons are a different proposition entirely depending upon their construction and composition.
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