Interesting info
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Phil Scovell" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, February 01, 2008 12:50 PM
Subject: [ECHURCH-USA] Firing Up the Sun


> This was on a ham radio list today and I thought, since the sun is so very
> much a part of end times prophecy, you might like reading about it.  The
> bottom line is, those going through the tribulation will see the sun going
> into a nova red giant stage, that is, heating up 7 times what it is right
> now, at least according to the Bible.
>
> Phil.
>
>
>
>> Here is a recent post from KnowledgeNews.  A subscription gets you a
>> message on a wide variety of topics.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> KnowledgeNews
>> SciencePhiles
>> Firing Up the Sun
>>
>> The sun, in ultraviolet light. The colors reveal temperature,
>> from 1.8 million (blue) to 3.6 million (red) degrees Fahrenheit.=20
>>
>> Friends, sun scientists have announced the start of a new solar cycle.
>> (It's "Solar Cycle 24," if you're keeping track.) What does that mean?
>>
>> You might not know it, but solar activity waxes and wanes in 11-year
>> cycles. Recently, we've been at the end of a cycle, with a comparative
>> lack of solar
>> activity. The start of a new cycle means that the frequency of solar
>> storms and other activity should start to pick up--though the new cycle
>> won't reach
>> "Solar Max" until 2011 or 2012.
>>
>> There's nothing to fear--though NASA scientists warn that "solar storms
>> can disable satellites that we depend on for weather forecasts and GPS
>> navigation."
>> There is, however, plenty to learn about the sun. You know that the
>> bright ball in the sky is crucial to life on Earth. But do you know what
>> it's actually
>> made of? Today, let's slather on some SPF 15,000,000 and journey to the
>> center of the sun.
>>
>> 3 . . . 2 . . . 1 . . . Blastoff!
>>
>> First, get comfortable. It's going to be a long trip--about 93 million
>> miles (150 million km), depending on where Earth is in its elliptical
>> orbit. Since
>> we've got time to burn, let's brush up on some basic sun facts.
>>
>> Size facts: Astronomers say our sun is nothing special as stars go--just
>> another middle-aged yellow dwarf. Even so, it's by far the biggest thing
>> in our
>> neck of the cosmos, accounting for more than 99 percent of our solar
>> system's total mass. More than a million Earths could fit inside the
>> sun, which has
>> a diameter of 865,000 miles (1.4 million km).
>>
>> Age facts: The sun has been burning for 4.6 billion years and has a life
>> expectancy of nine or ten billion. In another four or five billion, our
>> yellow
>> dwarf will expand into a hot red giant. Then it will contract into a
>> white dwarf, smaller than it is now. Finally, when all its thermal
>> energy is spent,
>> it will become a cold black dwarf.
>>
>> Inside facts: The sun is made almost entirely of hydrogen and helium.
>> About 70 percent of its mass is hydrogen. Another 28 percent is helium.
>> The rest consists
>> of elements like carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen. The sun's core process is
>> a nuclear fusion reaction in which hydrogen atoms fuse to produce helium
>> atoms
>> (and release energy when they do).
>>
>> Touching the Surface
>>
>> If you're starting to feel hot, it's because we've reached the corona,
>> the outermost part of the sun's atmosphere (not including the solar
>> wind, which blows
>> out well past Pluto). Temperatures here regularly reach 3.6 million
>> degrees Fahrenheit (2 million degrees Celsius). The corona extends
>> millions of miles
>> into space, so we still have a way to go to get to the next layer.
>> Luckily, we're flying fast.
>>
>> Beneath the corona is the chromosphere (from the Greek word chromos, or
>> "color"). It has a reddish tint, and it's far cooler than the
>> corona--thousands
>> of degrees hot instead of millions. In fact, scientists still don't
>> understand why the corona is so hot. From Earth, we can't see the
>> chromosphere, or
>> the corona, except during a solar eclipse.
>>
>> Having traveled through several thousand miles of chromosphere, we reach
>> the photosphere, which is only a few hundred miles thick. Here, the
>> temperature
>> is a comparatively cool 10,000 degrees F (5,500 degrees C), and energy
>> is given off as visible light. The photosphere is the part of the sun we
>> ordinarily
>> see from Earth. Some call it the sun's "surface," because beneath it,
>> the sun's gases are thick enough to be opaque. Above it, they are
>> transparent.
>>
>> Inside Stuff
>>
>> Beneath the photosphere, we reach the sun's interior, which has three
>> layers. First is the convective zone, where the temperature heats up
>> again to around
>> 3.6 million degrees F (2 million degrees C). Here, energy circulates in
>> large cells. This part of the sun is a bit like a pot of boiling water,
>> only with
>> hot plasma bubbling up toward the surface.
>>
>> Further in, we reach the radiative zone. It's as hot as 12.6 million
>> degrees F here (7 million degrees C), and energy radiates out from the
>> sun's core at
>> the speed of light. Still, this deep, the sun is so dense that each
>> photon of energy may bounce from particle to particle for a million
>> years before reaching
>> the convective zone.
>>
>> After fighting through that traffic jam, we finally arrive at the sun's
>> core, which burns at 27 million degrees F (15 million degrees C). Talk
>> about a high-pressure
>> environment! The pressure here is 250 billion times that of Earth, so
>> great that hydrogen atoms fuse to form helium atoms. Every second, 700
>> million tons
>> of hydrogen become 695 million tons of helium, with the extra 5 million
>> tons released as energy.
>>
>> Only one half of one-billionth of the sun's energy will travel to the
>> Earth's surface, but that's still enough to sustain life on our planet.
>> Sunlight makes
>> the 93-million-mile trip in around eight and a half minutes--almost as
>> fast as you just made it.
>>
>> --Steve Sampson and Kris Herbert
>>
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