How Close to the Sun?

Tut tut OCUK, I can't believe how some of you are treating the OP and calling him a troll just for asking a question.
I would also like to know the answer but most of you are content just to call him a troll.
Get a grip.
 
Dimple said:
Tut tut OCUK, I can't believe how some of you are treating the OP and calling him a troll just for asking a question.
I would also like to know the answer but most of you are content just to call him a troll.
Get a grip.
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This is the default GD mode. Maybe I'm getting too old for this, but I agree.
 
OI!! this is a space thread !!!

FINALLY SOMEONE ASKS SOMETHING RELEVANT TO THE UNIVERSE THEY LIVE IN INSTEAD OF MEANINGLESS ***p that usually comes up !!

OK..........well as close as u can get to the sun depends on insulation, so I guess it depends on the best insulator that humanity can find.

Also you could use the ever increasing available solar power to ones advantage by powering something to keep someone cool.

An interesting question!
 
hahaha true, but not quite Anty T, super conductors keep all the'reaction' inside........and its a tiny reaction........it could deflect solar flares of course, but not pure heat energy! another issue that one
 
AndyT said:
The science used to contain a fusion reaction could surely be used to protect you from the harmful effects of the sun? Or am I being retarded?
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No, strong magnetic fields are used in experimental fusion reactors to contain the charged plasma within a region. The key word here is charged - the particles contained within the plasma have a net electric charge and so can be affected by a magnetic field.

EM radiation, on the other hand, is not charged (i.e. photons - which are Gauge Bosons and are the mediators of the electromagnetic force - do not carry electric charge) and so one couldn't use magnetic fields to deflect radiation from the space station on the journey towards the sun.
 
PhysicsMan94 said:
No, strong magnetic fields are used in experimental fusion reactors to contain the charged plasma within a region. The key word here is charged - the particles contained within the plasma have a net electric charge and so can be affected by a magnetic field.

EM radiation, on the other hand, is not charged (i.e. photons - which are Gauge Bosons and are the mediators of the electromagnetic force - do not carry electric charge) and so one couldn't use magnetic fields to deflect radiation from the space station on the journey towards the sun.
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Well schooled sir, I have learnt something from GD today! I'm a mechanical engineer so the intricacies are lost on me I'm afraid.
 
PhysicsMan94 said:
No problem :)

I'm in the second year of a Physics degree so I have a knack for these kind of things :D
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What about the Sci-Fi 'force fields' that are often thrown about in Star Trek and Star Wars? Do these hold *any* merit at all at being replicable in real life (at any stage?!)?

I cannot begin to imagine what they would be composed of within our own Universe.
 
No, such force fields aren't even theoretical.

Watch michio kaku scifi science series, one episode is a
Bout building a star ship. With carbon Nanotube netting iirc
as one part of a multi layered defence.

The closest to such shield is probably surrounding your ship in a fusion bubble like an inside out fusion reactor letting the magnetic deflect magnetic stuff and plasma burning other stuff up. However you would not be able to see or communicate, let alone the complication of actually building it.
 
mlbtheshow said:
Interesting... especially about the Moon, that always looks cold to me, didnt even think it would be hot.

So basically the air in space is hot then, sort of like how the air is always hot in Dubai or something. Now I thought space would be freezing cold.

In reality then, we wont really be able to live on Mars as its further away and probably a lot colder than we think. Funny how its red though, its that colour association that makes me think, sod Mars that would be hot to walk on.
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there is NO air in space, thats what the word means, empty, a vacuum... mars is red because of extreme dryness means iron oxide predominates, you get the same effect on Earth in places such as the Australian desert. Space is neither hot nor cold, its simply nothingness. (well technically there is about one atom per cubic metre, but the effect of solar energy on that can be effectively ignored). Energy from the Sun needs a surface to fall on to energise it, and temperature is simply the measurement of the excitation of atoms.

The moon varies between about 130 degrees above and about 150 degrees below freezing depending on sunlit or not. (Or is it the other way around, I can't remember and I'm too lazy to look it up). Space stations/satellites have a similar temperature range on the surface iirc. And before anyone asks the obvious question, the Earth doesn't have such extremes of temperature because the atmosphere acts as a buffer to even out temperatures, which is why we have something called "weather".
 
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AndyT said:
The science used to contain a fusion reaction could surely be used to protect you from the harmful effects of the sun? Or am I being retarded?
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Not retarded, no. Quite the opposite - you're using your intelligence to extrapolate from your knowledge, having evaluated the relevance of that knowledge.

But it wouldn't work for two reasons:

1) The sun fuses different atoms to those used in nuclear fusion reactors and it produces a bigger variety of dangerous emissions, some of which would not be affected by the methods used to contain a fusion reaction on Earth.

2) Scale. The maximum power output of a fusion reactor on Earth is currently 16 MW (JET peak power test, not sustainable). The power output of the sun is about 40,000,000,000,000,000,000 MW.

Earth has ~95,000,000 miles of vacuum and a couple of hundred miles of atmosphere and an extremely powerful magnetic shield and it's only exposed to a miniscule part of the sun's output and even then it's still enough to kill a person. We're nowhere near being able to build any shield effective enough for anything like a close approach.
 
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AndyT said:
The science used to contain a fusion reaction could surely be used to protect you from the harmful effects of the sun? Or am I being retarded?
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In a way, possibly. Since we'd use that energy to convert heat to electricity. But not directly, and certainly not now. It's not just the heat though, it's also the high energy particles that are expelled (solar wind), especially during mass coronal ejections (what produce the Aurora Borealis). That'll probably kill you first. It's not somewhere you want to be.
 
You could put a big tungsten shield in front of yourself, like a few metre's thick. That would get you fairly close, until it melted at about 3200c
You wouldn't be able to see it though because any windows would have melted at half that temperature, and you'd need to heat your side otherwise you'd be very very cold.

I have no idea how thick it would need to be to absorb/deflect gamma radiation at that distance though. Could be tens or hundreds of metres.
 
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