On Mon, Nov 25, 2013 at 12:33 AM, Jason Resch <[email protected]> wrote:
> I like the analogy that stars are essentially just giant compost heaps. > The levels of energy production in the core of the sun is quite low on a > per-volume basis: a few hundred watts per cubic meter. On the same order > as your own biological metabolism (and not much greater than that of a > compost heap). It is only by virtue of the huge volume of a star that it > produces large quantities of energy, but all the energy of a cubic meter of > stellar core would be just enough to run a TV or a computer. > That's true of normal stars but not of supernovas. In a supernova in less than a second a mass of carbon and oxygen 1.44 times the mass of our sun is transmutated, primarily into iron, but with traces of heavier elements too . In that one second a supernova releases more energy than our sun will in its entire 10 billion year lifetime. And per pound the accretion disk around a black hole gives off even more energy than a supernova does. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
