posted on Sep, 2 2006 @ 08:09 AM
Yeah, Global Warming is probably extra fueled by our efforts as humans - going on a steep slope instead of a slower one - but there are such natural
cycles in nature.
During the times of the Dinosaurs, things were steaming! It was a lot hotter back then than it is now.
As for the sun, just to set the record straight, it will not go supernovae. It's much too small for that. The sun will collapse, increasing the
temperature of the core, and starting Helium Fusion (turning Helium into Lithium and some other elements). It will continue to go through such cycles,
each time creating a new, heavier, element. However, eventually the mass of the star will limit how high its temperature can go, and the fusion
process will end, and the star will collapse until electron repulsion keeps the molecules seperate. This is a White Dwarf Star - it's not really a
star, since all its light is just stored energy that it slowly releases. Eventually it will go dark.
The most interesting kind of White Dwarf would continue fusing matter into Carbon, Oxygen, and Neon. If Carbon were in the dominant, once the star had
cooled you would have super-dense carbon, which, as we all know, forms into a Diamond - massive diamonds floating through space... though such stars
would be exceedingly rare, and may not even yet exist around our local group.
Supernovae occur when the star is so massive that the electrons can't keep molecules apart, and the temperature therefore rises high enough for
fusion to continue into progressively shorter and shorter phases (higher temperatures = faster fusion, no matter what's being fused).
It all ends at Iron... Iron can't be fused to give off energy, and Iron can't be split to release energy (anything lower or higher than Iron can be
fused or split to release energy respectively). Then, once the star is finished burning all its core into Iron, a process that at those incredible
temperatures takes about only 1 day, Ka-Boom. The shell of the star implodes as no fusion is occuring to keep it up, and no amount of energy will
cause fusion to begin again. Within that blinding moment, all the extra gasses and fusable materials that were above the core are instantly fused,
producing a huge array of elements, and then releasing a massive amount of energy which results in the Supernovae.
That's not the end of the core though... it continues to collapse. The first is Neutron Repulsion. The collapse is so strong that the Weak Nuclear
force was overcome and electrons are pushed into protons, creating neutrons, and with the electric force already overcome earlier, there's nothing to
stop the core from becoming a pile of neutrons - which, thanks to the Strong Nuclear Force, keeps the neutrons from collapsing upon each other. This
is a Neutron Star, one of the two possible end-results of a Supernovae. For all intents and purposes, it's one giant atom.
The other end result is the famed Black-Hole. Here, the Strong Nuclear force was overcome, and there's no force that keeps all the matter from
combining with others. Reality is torn assunder and the singularity is formed.
A star requires a minimum of 25 solar masses to become a Black Hole, whilst about 4 solar masses are required to go Nova.