Might this be unexpectedly important for Life? (Spherical Sun)

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Message 1272342 - Posted: 17 Aug 2012, 23:27:25 UTC
Last modified: 17 Aug 2012, 23:30:29 UTC

Now here is a highly unexpected curiosity...

Our sun is almost precisely spherical!...

Sun is the most perfect sphere ever observed in nature

... the first precise measurement of the sun's equatorial bulge, or its "oblateness". The results were a big surprise. "We were shocked,"...


How many other stars might match that? And might that matter?

Keep searchin',
Martin

(Sorry for the multiple bad puns! :-) )
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Message 1272692 - Posted: 18 Aug 2012, 19:55:19 UTC
Last modified: 18 Aug 2012, 19:58:06 UTC

Martin,
The story is mildly interesting, at best!

What interests me more is that every time i read an astronomy article, the astronomers use words like "surprised" and "shocked" and "amazing" and "shocking" and "unexpected" to describe every single discovery.

I mean, come off it! Is it really "shocking" that the Sun is spherical? What, is the astronomer looking for a Nobel prize for the discovery or something? He found out that the Sun is round.......Woooow! What a shock!

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Message 1272791 - Posted: 19 Aug 2012, 2:46:19 UTC

Well stars that spin very fast do have a significant equatorial bulge but I can't see where that would inhibit the development of life on one of it's planets if all the other factors favor it's development.
Bob DeWoody

My motto: Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow as it may not be required. This no longer applies in light of current events.
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Message 1273398 - Posted: 20 Aug 2012, 17:25:58 UTC - in response to Message 1272692.  
Last modified: 20 Aug 2012, 17:27:53 UTC

... The story is mildly interesting, at best!

Quite an understatement there...


What interests me more is that every time i read an astronomy article, the astronomers use words like "surprised" and "shocked" and "amazing" and "shocking" and "unexpected" to describe every single discovery.

Don't be misled by glib irreverent trash media trying to drum up a few extra clicks for their advertisers...


I mean, come off it! Is it really "shocking" that the Sun is spherical? What, is the astronomer looking for a Nobel prize for the discovery or something? He found out that the Sun is round.......Woooow! What a shock!

That is indeed a huge shock.


We do not know of any other stars that might be as perfectly round. A comparable example might be for a slow-rotation neutron star but I don't think they can exist. Perhaps possible for a magnetar that has be dragged down to a slow rate by 'dynamo' effects?...

(All stars can be expected to have a large bulge at their equators. A bit like a squashed doughnut.)


Keep searchin',
Martin
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Message 1273400 - Posted: 20 Aug 2012, 17:26:55 UTC - in response to Message 1272791.  

Well stars that spin very fast do have a significant equatorial bulge but I can't see where that would inhibit the development of life on one of it's planets if all the other factors favor it's development.

That is something very unusual, and we assume intelligent life to be unusual.


All an unconnected coincidence?

Keep searchin',
Martin

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Message 1273535 - Posted: 20 Aug 2012, 22:22:55 UTC - in response to Message 1273400.  

Well stars that spin very fast do have a significant equatorial bulge but I can't see where that would inhibit the development of life on one of it's planets if all the other factors favor it's development.

That is something very unusual, and we assume intelligent life to be unusual.


All an unconnected coincidence?


Perhaps...

The mix of material, mass and angular momentum for our solar system that generated such a slowly rotating super-spherical long-lived stable sun is also consequently 'just right' for the orbital differentiation to give rise to an iron cored (magnetic field protected) water world at just the right orbit and rotation for that size of sun to give a good possibility for a rich variety of life to develop...


(Trying not to be anthropomorphic about this! ;-) )

Keep searchin',
Martin


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Message 1273573 - Posted: 21 Aug 2012, 2:08:24 UTC

There are perhaps many more conditions and narrow parameters for each of them for life as we know it to start and thrive.
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Message 1279323 - Posted: 2 Sep 2012, 17:52:49 UTC

The Sun -- It's too Round! (5 minute video)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_9n3cOL690

John.
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Message 1279559 - Posted: 3 Sep 2012, 7:29:13 UTC - in response to Message 1273573.  

There are perhaps many more conditions and narrow parameters for each of them for life as we know it to start and thrive.

That would recall the Gaia hypothesis by James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis, which goes back to the ideas of Pierre Teilhard De Chardin, SJ, and Vladimir Vernadsky.
"The global ecosystem ia a superorganism with a whole much greater than the sum of its parts. This vision is clearly theological". from "A globe, clothing itself with a brain", by Jennifer Cobb Kreisberg. But I've lost the link, I have only a hard copy of the article in Wired News, June 1995.
Tullio
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Message 1279597 - Posted: 3 Sep 2012, 10:52:21 UTC - in response to Message 1279569.  
Last modified: 3 Sep 2012, 10:53:18 UTC

Yet another "mystery" surrounding the Sun: scientists working with the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) have observed that the Sun is far too perfectly round. Centrifugal forces in a rotating ball of gas should make the Sun wider at its equator than along its axis -- that's the requirement of the standard model.

This seems to me to be another conspiracy theory. Next we'll have that aliens built the sun and its not a star at all!

You read it here first folks!

Unfortunately, 'Conspiracists' will see conspiracy in the normal scientific method in that even as we find new discoveries, the science must somehow be conspiring to 'hide' the answer...

I guess it is all a game of expanding The Horizon of Ignorance! ;-)


Keep searchin',
Martin


(As you discover and learn more, you then know more to search yet further, and so your sphere of knowledge expands to push the horizon of ignorance a little further away. But also, as you know more, you also come to better appreciate how very much more there is yet to learn as the horizon expands further... ;-) )
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Message 1279606 - Posted: 3 Sep 2012, 11:19:13 UTC

A 'new' idea for our super-spherical sun is that it is so perfectly spherical because the dominant effect that determines its shape is NOT gravity!...


Our sun may well be so perfectly spherical because its outer reaches (the chromosphere) is actually an electrically driven gas "plasma ball"...

I think that is quite a plausible idea. The electrical and magnetic forces at play can be greatly stronger than gravity.

However, I suspect that the more dense interior will still be oblate as is expected for a gravitational rotating object. I wonder if solar seismic observations might reveal that...


Keep searchin',
Martin

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Message 1279613 - Posted: 3 Sep 2012, 11:28:10 UTC - in response to Message 1279597.  

---[snipped]---

This seems to me to be another conspiracy theory. Next we'll have that aliens built the sun and its not a star at all!

You read it here first folks!


I would be shocked if the sun is a cubus or piramid ;-)
It also could be an alien power-plant.....but I think "they" prefer a black-hole!





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Message 1279647 - Posted: 3 Sep 2012, 14:47:26 UTC - in response to Message 1279613.  

---[snipped]---
...You read it here first folks!

I would be shocked if the sun is a cubus or piramid ;-)
It also could be an alien power-plant.....but I think "they" prefer a black-hole!

Nah... Don't be daft! The angles are far too obtuse for stable physics. Those old shapes prove to be too inefficient. You get a far more robust physical order from pentagon or hexagon forms to generate a much more powerful dynamo force for far higher power outputs.

As has been noted also for Saturn and Jupiter...

Keep searchin',
Martin


;-)

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Message 1279819 - Posted: 3 Sep 2012, 22:45:54 UTC - in response to Message 1279569.  
Last modified: 3 Sep 2012, 22:46:44 UTC

This seems to me to be another conspiracy theory. Next we'll have that aliens built the sun and its not a star at all!

You read it here first folks!

Chris,
You actually make sense there. Over the last 2 years, i have given a lot of thought about if aliens might actually be living inside the Sun. Maybe the Sun is hollow on the inside!

Maybe all those ancient people that were praying to "Sun Gods" weren't mad after all! Maybe they weren't praying to the Sun, but instead they were praying to the Gods living inside the Sun!

I wouldn't completely rule it out! .....LOL

John.
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Message 1279824 - Posted: 3 Sep 2012, 23:06:24 UTC - in response to Message 1279569.  

Yet another "mystery" surrounding the Sun: scientists working with the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) have observed that the Sun is far too perfectly round. Centrifugal forces in a rotating ball of gas should make the Sun wider at its equator than along its axis -- that's the requirement of the standard model.

This seems to me to be another conspiracy theory. Next we'll have that aliens built the sun and its not a star at all!

You read it here first folks!






Well, the "experts" can't decide what a planet really is...so, why should we trust them to be able to find a real Star?? :)


Lt

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Message 1286095 - Posted: 21 Sep 2012, 1:15:51 UTC

Martin,
When you first posted this story, i was overly sarcastic in my response. But in the mean time, i have given this "Spherical Sun" story quite a bit of thought.

But your right, this news about the Sun being perfectly spherical is very significant. Its significant because it breaks Newtons laws of gravity and Einsteins special and general relativity.

Simply put, if the Sun is spinning, it should "bulge" a bit in the middle, but it doesn't! So Newton and Einstein were both wrong! Both theories are wrong!

John.
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Message 1286248 - Posted: 21 Sep 2012, 13:51:11 UTC - in response to Message 1286095.  
Last modified: 21 Sep 2012, 13:56:24 UTC

... i have given this "Spherical Sun" story quite a bit of thought.

But your right, this news about the Sun being perfectly spherical is very significant. Its significant because it breaks Newtons laws of gravity and Einsteins special and general relativity.

How so?


Simply put, if the Sun is spinning, it should "bulge" a bit in the middle, but it doesn't! So Newton and Einstein were both wrong! Both theories are wrong!

Indeed so... Upon first glance that is...

So yes, that is why the "perfect sphere" aspect is so very interesting. An equatorial bulge, just as we significantly have here on Earth, would be very much expected. However, for our sun, such a bulge is not there, at all!

So... What are the possibilities?...

  • God? (Far too fanciful, audacious, and highly presumptuous...)
  • Aliens? (Just too weird to be true!)
  • Our sun uniquely does not rotate? (Observation suggests that not to be so.)



Newton and Einstein have not been proved 'wrong' for their accepted theories for any other examples so far... So then we have...


  • ... a host of physical possibilities available when you consider how very weak gravity is when compared to other forces such as electric and magnetic effects... ('Small hint'... ;-) )





Keep searchin',
Martin


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Message 1286284 - Posted: 21 Sep 2012, 15:35:00 UTC

The Sun is not a solid sphere. It is rotating in 25 days at the equator and in 27 days at a 40 degrees latitude. So the centrifugal force is much weaker than that of Earth, which rotates once a day.
Tullio
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Message 1286287 - Posted: 21 Sep 2012, 15:39:23 UTC - in response to Message 1286284.  
Last modified: 21 Sep 2012, 15:41:50 UTC

Thanks Tullio:

Including the differential rotation, three more clues there...

There's also the question of why so slow a rotation?... Another clue?


;-)

Keep searchin',
Martin
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Message 1286321 - Posted: 21 Sep 2012, 16:48:21 UTC - in response to Message 1286287.  

The relative slowness of the Sun's rotation is put in relationship with its mass in the first chapter of "Cosmogony of the solar system" by Fred Hoyle. It the Sun had a bigger mass it could rotate faster, otherwise it would disintegrate. This is what I gathered from reading the chapter.
Tullio
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Message boards : SETI@home Science : Might this be unexpectedly important for Life? (Spherical Sun)


 
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