David Roberson <[email protected]> wrote: Ask yourself how accurate the prediction might be? It would only take a > minor change in the radius of the sun to make it have a mass 2 times > (current super nova limit?) >
Oh come now! You know better than that. Issac Newton computed the mass of the sun based on his laws and the distance from earth to the sun. (The solar parallax.) The radius has nothing to do with it. His calculation was off by roughly factor of two, but our knowledge of the sun's distance has improved immeasurably since then, and we also know the mass of the earth more accurately. There is no way solar mass can be off by a factor of 2! I don't know about the sun, but we know the distance to the moon to within a few centimeters these days thanks to the reflectors left by the Apollo missions. It is astounding. - Jed
