Freezing the Universe and other Fun Activities

W

wolf

Chrono Cadet
How much energy exists in the universe? What if it were all suddenly converted to matter with no kinetic energy? It would be a big blob of something. But it would be so heavy it would crush itself by gravity and/or other forces, turning some of it back to energy.

What would happen if we "boiled" the universe - that is, converted all matter to energy? If it was converted to photons then pair-production would create charged particles. It would then form a dense energetic plasma which would begin chaotically but like charges would gradually attract each other enough to be neutralized. Thus a certain amount of the energy would be converted back to matter.

It seems that neither matter nor energy is completely stable. Rather, a balance between the two is nature's preference.
 
How much energy exists in the universe?
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There's no way to know that answer to the question or even if the question actually makes sense. With a 26 billion year horizon (the measured radius of the visible universe is about 13 billion LY) there's no way to know what is occuring "now" at distances of more than a few hundred thousand kilometers (if we consider "now" to mean an interval of a few seconds). In GR energy is a locally conserved quantity; it is not universally conserved.

What if it were all suddenly converted to matter with no kinetic energy? It would be a big blob of something. But it would be so heavy it would crush itself by gravity and/or other forces, turning some of it back to energy.
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True, if you cool matter to virtually absolute zero Kelvin you have a dense blob called a BEC (Bose-Einstein Condensate). It is a highly unstable form of matter subject to symmetry breaking. One reason for the instability is that internally the matter at the nuclear level still has a very high kinetic energy. The nucleus vibrates with energy. The internal movement at the nuclear level is sufficient to break the symmetry. Another symmetry breaking consideration is the act of observing the BEC. To observe the BEC you have to "bombard" the blob with photons. That's enough energy to break the symmetry and disintegrate the BEC.

What would happen if we "boiled" the universe - that is, converted all matter to energy? If it was converted to photons then pair-production would create charged particles. It would then form a dense energetic plasma which would begin chaotically but like charges would gradually attract each other enough to be neutralized. Thus a certain amount of the energy would be converted back to matter.
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Correct. We've "been there and done that", so too speak, as a universe. That was the form of mass-energy during the first ~10^-40 seconds of our existence after whatever the Big Bang event really was. The entire mass-energy of our universe was a multi-trillion degree plasma soup with no particles...is was simply too hot for quarks and gluons to form. But in the early inflationary period of the universe the plasma became less dense, cooled, gluons and quarks formed which in turm fused to create protons and neutrons. Electrons also formed during the early period and hydrogen came into existence.
 
On energy, is there an argument for example, for the Sun being an electrical phenomenon rather than a nuclear driven entity? The example for this proposition being the differential in temperature in the outlying zone of the Sun compared against the internal temperature, the outlying temperature being higher by a substantial amount. Unusual for a nuclear reaction, surely?
 
On energy, is there an argument for example, for the Sun being an electrical phenomenon rather than a nuclear driven entity? The example for this proposition being the differential in temperature in the outlying zone of the Sun compared against the internal temperature, the outlying temperature being higher by a substantial amount. Unusual for a nuclear reaction, surely?
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The atoms in the sun are ionized, so in that sense it is electrical. But it's a side effect rather than a root cause. And there is an electrical current (and accompanying magnetic field) which flows through the solar system because of the solar wind.
 
rembrandt,

On energy, is there an argument for example, for the Sun being an electrical phenomenon rather than a nuclear driven entity?
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Sure, a few hundred years ago it was speculated that the sun worked on chemical (electrical) energy. But the numbers didn't play out. The sun, if it was a huge pile of coal, would have burned out a few million years after it was formed.

Only thermonuclear reactions, hydrogen ---> helium fusion, can explain how the sun has burned for 4 billion years and will continue to burn for another 4 billion years before it leaves the Main Sequence and enters the red giant phase of its life.

The example for this proposition being the differential in temperature in the outlying zone of the Sun compared against the internal temperature, the outlying temperature being higher by a substantial amount. Unusual for a nuclear reaction, surely?
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That surely would be an unusual situation for nuclear reactions. But it isn't the case for the sun (or any other star). The surface temperature of the sun is ~5700 degrees. The core temperature is ~16 million degrees.

We can directly measure the surface temperature but obviously can't directly measure the core temperature. However we can create thermonuclear reactions on Earth, directly measure the temperature and extrapolate the core temperature of the sun based on its mass. The 16 million degree estimate is a very good approximation based on theory, experiment and observation of, for example, gamma ray photons emitted by the sun.
 
Only thermonuclear reactions, hydrogen ---> helium fusion, can explain how the sun has burned for 4 billion years and will continue to burn for another 4 billion years before it leaves the Main Sequence and enters the red giant phase of its life.
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I might have it wrong but it was my understanding that the sun would begin to enter this phase in about a billion years. By this I mean the earth would start to feel the effects of this transition phase in about a billion years leaving no more time for life to evolve much further than it is has now on earth. Of course that is still a lot of time most of all to humans but back on topic. In a billion years the sun should slowly start its expansion phase and the earth will by all means start heating up. Global warming will be very real then. Anyway that was my understanding.
 
reactor,

No - it's 4-5 billion years before the sun leaves the PP (proton-proton fusion) Main Sequence as helium begins to dominate and helium ---> carbon-oxygen fusion begins in earnest.

At that time the core will heat up drastically and begin to win the equilibrium battle between thermodynamic expansion and gravitational collapse. The sun will pulsate wildly - as it expands the core cools and the star collapses; as it collaspes the fusion reaction heats up dramatically and it re-expands. Once it begins to fuse significant carbon and oxygen the true Red Giant phase will take over and the corona will bloat out to Venus and maybe Earth. Eventually the fusion process turns off as all the helium is consumed and, due to its small mass, no elements larger than oxygen can be formed. The sun will collapse, lose a significant portion of its mass in the process and settle to a white dwarf. After another ~50-60 billion years it will cool to whatever the ambient temperature of "empty" space is...1-2 Kelvin if the universe is "open"...and become a black dwarf. No black dwarf stars, as yet, exist. The universe is far too young for any white dwarf to have cooled to a black dwarf.
 
The universe was frozen up quite recently for a little while. Probably just a function check. When some folks woke up from the induced suspended animation to get them through it, they retained the freeze memory and got a little cabin crazy, kept going on and on and on and on about heating. Couldn't stop them excepting with a 200,000 dollar fee every time they started up talking to stop their mouth.
 
Ugh. The unbearable heaviness of being....AlGored. For the record, we in the US do not consider AlGore to be one of our typcial ingenious American types (note who gave him awards: Hollweird and the Euro-Nobel wonks). All he can figure out how to do is scare people with bad science such that they willingly (or not so much) give up their hard earned money to support his carbon enrichment scheme. He's a sick man... help us help him. Tell him "no" whenever you can!

RMT
 
Rainman, you have to get with the beat-----the Al-Gor-rhythm.
 
Darby, I wasn't referring to a theory of several hundred years ago, as you assert, of the Sun's energy being derived from an internal chemical reaction.
 
rembrandt,

Chemical energy is electromagnetic energy. Chemistry, whether stated in Classical or quantum terms, is at its base nothing more than moving electrons around. Stars are not driven by EM energy. It's a nuclear process mediated by the strong force.

In any case the question that was asked is whether there are E&M theories of stellar mechanics. The answer was yes. There have been such theories. But they have been shown to be wrong.

Of course there are EM fields present in stars. The energy involved in stars is many orders of magnitude too high for atoms to hold onto their electrons. The free electrons form electronic fluid plasma fields. But that's not what drives the boat. The tug-of-war in stars is between gravitation and the strong force. In young Main Sequence stars its a P-P process. In older stars it is a Triple-Alpha process - fusion of 3 alpha particles (helium) to carbon.

If stellar mechanics was based on E&M theory we wouldn't have to worry about the answer to the question. We wouldn't be here to ask the question because the only element that could possibly be present in the universe would be hydrogen. Stellar nucleosynthesis would not occur and there would be no stuff from which we would be made...stuff like carbon, oxygen, iron, copper, etc...because there would be no stars.
 
You are still deliberately and perversely harping on about chemical energy as the Sun's driver as if you think you are dealing with eleven year olds. You know very well that the nuclear explanation of the Sun's energy emission is a tissue of half baked lies and misrepresentations, promulgated by people who have abandoned science for the comfort of tenure in a university under the watchful eye of their funding foundation, financed by the cabal. The nuclear explanation is arrant nonsense. The Sun is an electrical phenomenon as you well know.
 
You are still deliberately and perversely harping on about chemical energy as the Sun's driver as if you think you are dealing with eleven year olds. You know very well that the nuclear explanation of the Sun's energy emission is a tissue of half baked lies and misrepresentations, promulgated by people who have abandoned science for the comfort of tenure in a university under the watchful eye of their funding foundation, financed by the cabal. The nuclear explanation is arrant nonsense. The Sun is an electrical phenomenon as you well know.
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Oh, God. One of those.

I'll just pass on this thread, thank you.
 
There's no doubt that any scientist who elects to separate from the herd mentality promulgated by the tenured time served and voice a different point of view is trashed. A lot of very useful information has been suppressed in this way. Your replies are nothing if not expected.
 
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