What does the Sun's surface look like close up?

If one could heat a solid block of iron sufficiently the block of iron would first change to a liquid and then to a gas. If one then ionized that resulting gas, thereby converting it into a plasma and then compressed the plasma into a volume smaller than the original volume of the solid, one would have a very dense plasma indeed, but it would not be a solid even though it's density was greater than the original solid. If one continued to remove electrons from the plasma the resulting volume would shrink. (Consider how much of the apparent volume of an atom is composed of nothing but empty space and you can visualize how the volume of the plasma could shrink until the nuclei of each atom was finally forced into contact with all it's nearest neighbors).

Such a substance[plasma] could not exist unless the shrinkage happened so suddenly that the individual nucleus of each atom simply did not have sufficient time to transition to something besides a nucleus. As the plasma shrank it would heat up due to the tremendous forces being applied to it to strip off the electrons. Finally, just prior to physical contact between all the various nucleus's, they would all come apart into their constituient particles and further shrinkage would force the particles into closer & closer association. At some stage in the shrinkage process the original block of iron would become a highly condensed soup of quarks with a volume so tiny relative to the starting volume that it could not be seen even by a very powerful microscope.

How much further could the plasma/soup shrink? I don't know the answer to that question, but something tells me the shrinkage process could indeed continue until all that remained was an incredibly tiny speck of compressed energy far, far denser than any solid could ever be. Does a black hole reach that stage? No one knows for sure. Are all black holes created equal?, i.e., do some reach that stage and others not? Again, no one knows. We do know that theoritically the volume of the original solid could shrink until it was so small it could pass right through normal matter without ever touching anything. (Assuming the tiny speck of whatever did not still contain the gravity & inertia of the original mass--which it apparently does, and further assuming it wasn't at a temperature that would vaporize whatever it was going through--which it would be). Just how far could the shrinkage continue? No one has anything but the vaguest notion. Could the entire mass of the universe be brought together into such a point of near nothingness? Some say yes and others no, but the truth is we don't know and can probably never know.

If indeed all the mass of the universe could be brought together into such a tiny, hot point would gravity still exist? If it did not, where did it go? If it did, what force could possibly ever cause the point to suddenly expand/inflate back into a normal universe? GOD is just as good an answer here as anything else.

As a final question, assume for a moment that the big bang did happen and that the entire universe inflated/expanded out of one incredibly tiny, hot point of energy. As it expanded there would come a point in the expansion where densities and temperatures would have dropped enough that normal matter could once again start to form. Supposedly, such did happen and equal (or nearly so) quantities of normal matter and antimatter were formed simultaneously. Immediately thereafter they collided and destroyed one another--converting into pure energy in the process and leaving only a tiny portion of normal matter behind. If this happened, where did all the energy go?

Are you confused yet? I sure as hell am.

[edit on 27-2-2006 by Astronomer68]

"Immediately thereafter they collided and destroyed one another--converting into pure energy in the process and leaving only a tiny portion of normal matter behind. If this happened, where did all the energy go?"

The matter that was left absorbed a portion of it and the rest went into the expansion of space. the energy you wonder about is in the now energy less photon cloud that is everywhere and in everything and is represented when activated by zero point energy as the supposed virtual photons or non-point photons.









[edit on 2/27/2006 by bodebliss]

These links might help:


Tired Light Theory

Starlight pub

bodebliss I have read the Tired Light Theory before and rejected it as an adequate explanation for the redshift of light as well as an alternative to the Big Bang Theory. The Tired Light Theory implies the existence of mass for photons, yet all empirical evidence to date says photons are massless. This rejection is not meant to say that I firmly believe in the Big Bang Theory because I don't. I just have not found an adequate alternative yet. I wish I had a better understanding of quantum mechanics so I could follow the math & logic of string theory & multi-dimensional matter/space/time better. There seems to be something there but I only get brief glimpses of it now and then.

So-called vacuum energy could explain the missing energy in my present view of the universe, but if it does the quantity of it must be beyond my comprehension because I can't wrap my mind around it yet. The very idea of virtual particle pairs emerging in a vacuum and then destroying one another leaves me with a very unsatisfied feeling about it all because it implies an agitation of the energy behind it all. Somehow, I believe the correct explanation will be simple, robust and elegant--if we ever find it.

Well you know NASA puts out a tape of interpreted sounds made from recorded phantom electromagnetic fields(which pervades all of space) sent back from the voyager spacecrafts.


Well if you don't like "Tired Light Theory", what about this one.


The blinking Universe

Watch Static on your tv, 2% of it is the birth of the universe. The guys who found it were trying to get rid of it by the research facility down the street was trying to find it, and the guys trying to destroy it won the Nobel Science Prize that year.

Just a stupid fact to do with space and such.

You could not possibly have been serious in proposing I consider a 'blinking universe' so I wil not bother commenting on it. Some clever person, or group, will come up with a verifiable, right answer some day and physics as we know it will be changed forever. I just hope I'm still around to see the answer.

BTW, some new research on black hole evaporation via "Hawking Radiation" suggests that speeds faster than light may be possible.

Sorry I took us so far off topic. My original intent was to show that a sufficiently dense plasma (i.e., one that could and probably does exist within the Sun) would act very much like a rigid solid surface.

[edit on 28-2-2006 by Astronomer68]

I'm not sure exactly...But ask these people.