Starship Asterisk*

I'm watching this very hyperactive and sensationalistic "documentary" program called "The Universe." I think it's by Discovery Channel? I'm 4 minutes in to the 1st episode and they said something that made me stop. I know the sun is powered by fusion reaction, fine. But then, they said, "the same power that fuels the hydrogen bomb." Last I heard, we don't have a mechanism to utilize fusion power. Does the hydrogen bomb maybe accidentally have some fusion by product? I'm so confused.

rriverstone wrote:I'm watching this very hyperactive and sensationalistic "documentary" program called "The Universe." I think it's by Discovery Channel? I'm 4 minutes in to the 1st episode and they said something that made me stop. I know the sun is powered by fusion reaction, fine. But then, they said, "the same power that fuels the hydrogen bomb." Last I heard, we don't have a mechanism to utilize fusion power. Does the hydrogen bomb maybe accidentally have some fusion by product? I'm so confused.

We can produce fusion reactions, and we certainly do so in fusion bombs. What we can't yet do is produce a controlled fusion reaction that produces more power than is required to create that reaction. In other words, we haven't figured out a way to use fusion reactions as sustained energy sources.

A hydrogen bomb does produce a large amount of energy, but I don't know how to productively harness that energy. Do you?

Now, they're talking about solar photons. They are saying, once a photon enters the convection layer of the sun, it is pushed up by gasses, traveling at hundreds of miles per hour. um. Don't photons travel at the speed of light?? And isn't it true that not even a photon could travel the speed of light + hundreds of mph? Am I stupid?

Chris said, "I don't know how to productively harness that energy. Do you?" If you mean beyond running like hell in the other direction, not really. Thx. 4 yer reply. I mistook fusion POWER for fusion REACTION creation. Somebody skipped telling me that part, I guess.

rriverstone wrote:Now, they're talking about solar photons. They are saying, once a photon enters the convection layer of the sun, it is pushed up by gasses, traveling at hundreds of miles per hour. um. Don't photons travel at the speed of light?? And isn't it true that not even a photon could travel the speed of light + hundreds of mph? Am I stupid?

Hopefully, you're just misunderstanding what they are saying. The gases themselves are moving around at that speed, but the speed of the photons themselves is not affected- it remains something less than c. But the photons undergo scattering and absorption processes, so it takes a very long time for them to escape the Sun- tens or hundreds of thousands of years. Thus, the apparent rate of radiation transfer is very low.