Ross
21st March 2011, 03:58
Hi all,
Here is Mans quest to not only understand the "Atomic power Science" but his quest in controlling it....
Every atom within us and everything around us was made in the heart of a star (Sun) and all was made from the same starting ingredient.
The simplest element we have is Hydrogen and it is the building block for all the other elements we have.
In the heart of the Sun, Hydrogen nuclei protons are stuck together to make Helium. It sounds straightforward but it can only happen in the most extreme conditions. In order for these protons to come together, as they are both positively charged, they don’t want to come together so they actually have to be pushed together. In order to do this you need very high temperatures so they move very fast and you also need very high pressures.
The only part of the Sun that is hot and dense enough to do this is the core, an area that contains half of the Suns mass in less than 2% of its volume. Here at fifteen million degrees the protons are bashed together so hard that they fuse. A helium nucleus is a tiny bit lighter than the combined mass of the 4 protons it is made from and as Einstein tells us it is this tiny bit of lost mass that provides the power. Energy is equal to mass multiplied by the speed of light and then multiplied by the speed of light again (E=MC squared) and the speed of light is a very big number. So if we take a small amount of Mass we get a huge amount of energy and that is the energy that powers our sun.
Every second, 5 million tons of the Sun is converted to pure energy and although it has been burning for 5 Billion years it is only half way through its supply of Hydrogen.
The light produced at the core must travel over 500,000km to the surface and it does so very slowly. The heart of the Sun is so dense that the speed of light is less than 1millimetre per second. It can take over 200,000 years for the light to travel from the core to the surface; it takes just another 8 minutes to reach Earth.
This is what the power of nuclear fusion looks like from 150,000,000km away. The H-bomb was mans first attempt at recreating the Sun on Earth. A balloon full of Hydrogen squeezed until it released its energy.
In contrast to its destructive power its long been realized that controlled Nuclear fusion could solve the worlds energy problems….Yeah right, until its goes seriously wrong…
It has been one of the holy grails of Science for half a century…You can see why Man wanted to understand this creation, it is amazing, anyway you look at it, but Man is far from being in control of such Power.
Regards,
Ross
Here is Mans quest to not only understand the "Atomic power Science" but his quest in controlling it....
Every atom within us and everything around us was made in the heart of a star (Sun) and all was made from the same starting ingredient.
The simplest element we have is Hydrogen and it is the building block for all the other elements we have.
In the heart of the Sun, Hydrogen nuclei protons are stuck together to make Helium. It sounds straightforward but it can only happen in the most extreme conditions. In order for these protons to come together, as they are both positively charged, they don’t want to come together so they actually have to be pushed together. In order to do this you need very high temperatures so they move very fast and you also need very high pressures.
The only part of the Sun that is hot and dense enough to do this is the core, an area that contains half of the Suns mass in less than 2% of its volume. Here at fifteen million degrees the protons are bashed together so hard that they fuse. A helium nucleus is a tiny bit lighter than the combined mass of the 4 protons it is made from and as Einstein tells us it is this tiny bit of lost mass that provides the power. Energy is equal to mass multiplied by the speed of light and then multiplied by the speed of light again (E=MC squared) and the speed of light is a very big number. So if we take a small amount of Mass we get a huge amount of energy and that is the energy that powers our sun.
Every second, 5 million tons of the Sun is converted to pure energy and although it has been burning for 5 Billion years it is only half way through its supply of Hydrogen.
The light produced at the core must travel over 500,000km to the surface and it does so very slowly. The heart of the Sun is so dense that the speed of light is less than 1millimetre per second. It can take over 200,000 years for the light to travel from the core to the surface; it takes just another 8 minutes to reach Earth.
This is what the power of nuclear fusion looks like from 150,000,000km away. The H-bomb was mans first attempt at recreating the Sun on Earth. A balloon full of Hydrogen squeezed until it released its energy.
In contrast to its destructive power its long been realized that controlled Nuclear fusion could solve the worlds energy problems….Yeah right, until its goes seriously wrong…
It has been one of the holy grails of Science for half a century…You can see why Man wanted to understand this creation, it is amazing, anyway you look at it, but Man is far from being in control of such Power.
Regards,
Ross