Superman and The Sun Experiment / S D Rodrian

On 10 Okt., 06:57, Aardvark wrote:
Obviously the ping-pong ball overwhelmed
the fragile minds of many of the posters
here (I only used it as strictly a focusing
device, but far far too many poor souls here
were simply dumbfounded by a ping-pong
ball inside the Sun and wrecked their brains
over how it was reacting in there). And
this in spite of my warning then that if they
didn't have a mind they ought not try to
work their way through my [sic.] "mind"
experiment. Forget the ping-pong ball guys:
I only chose it, instead of a golf ball, say,
because it (too) most ironically is hollow.
Now, consider, instead:

Superman and The Sun Experiment.

[A thought experiment--further simplified
now for those who just cannot get past the
ping-pong ball of the original experiment.]

NOTE: This is happening in an universe
in which gravity behaves as everybody
thinks it does (Newton, Einstein, & you):

And, why Superman?
Because not only is
Superman immune
to gravity, while still
able to feel it (we've
often seen him just
floating about in many
of his movies but
we've never seen him
floating away every
time he closes his
eyes)... but he is also
actually strengthened
by the rays of our
yellow Sun--Therefore
he actually becomes
most superest of all
INSIDE the Sun!

The problem, of course was: getting a
hold of him. Luckily I knew where Lois
Lane worked and gave her a ring, in
exchange for which she quickly agreed
to help me meet him (Superman--By
the way, his name is Super Man not
"Joey Superman" or other, it's just that
he's not uppity and never insists he be
called MISTER Man): I very quickly
explained the nature of my experiment
to Super Man, and he agreed to undertake
to travel to the center of the Sun for the
sake of those poor souls who would
never grasp the meaning/purpose of
this thought experiment because they
had been struck dumb by the only thing
they were able to see from that instant
onwards, namely the bouncing ping-
pong ball.

--Your announcer is Mr. Maxwell Smart:

BEGIN THOUGHT EXPERIMENT

Now: Imagine Superman approaching
the surface of the Sun.

As he does so he feels the pull of the
Sun's gravity gradually increasing.

[When he is at the Sun's surface, or
pretty near it, Superman will feel the
pull of the Sun's gravity to be at its
maximum.]

The instant Superman plunges past the
surface of the Sun, he will feel the pull
of the Sun's gravity begin to decrease.
And it will continue to decrease as he
flies towards the Sun's center.

[This is because as Superman travels
closer and closer to the center of the
Sun: the amount of Sun mass pulling
on him is decreasing, all the time that
there will be a growing amount of Sun-
mass behind him pulling back on his
super body. We can set aside the Sun
mass to the sides, but we must still
subtract it from the "pulling" mass.]

Once Superman reaches the center of the
Sun he will feel either no gravity there (or
very little if any); and, if he so wishes, he
can lie there forever just floating about
impervious to all INCLUDING gravity (at
the exact center of a great hollow which

There is no great hollow in the center of the sun.
At least that's what the laws of gravity and
gas dynamics tell us.

the laws of gravity tell us will be found
thereabouts because most of the matter
at the center of the Sun will have been
"pulled" away from its center

There is no "pulling away" from the center taking place.
As soon as you are 1mm off the center of
a rotationally symmetric body, in effect the mass
of the 1mm ball inside that radius pulls you in.
The force may be small, but it is directed towards the center.

[there may
remain a single hydrogen atom at the exact
gravitational center of this hollow... but
certainly during 5 billion years of "pulling"
most other atoms will have been pulled
aside because they could NOT also be at
the exact gravitational center unless they
were one system, of course. If there is a
perfect hollow it is because its "left inner
wall surface" is under MORE gravitational
pull from the left wall than from the right
wall (on the other side of that hollow):
There may be as much mass in the right
wall of The Great Hollow as in the left
wall of The Great Hollow, yes, but the
mass of the left wall of The Great Hollow
is obviously closer to the "left inner wall
surface" [to quote a certain Mr. Rodrian].

Consider a thin double cone centered around
a point in your "hollow" and a single spherical
layer of sun material.
On the "left" the cone intersects the layer at distance a
and on the right at distance b.
Hence the mass that is cut out is a factor times
a^2 on the left and the same factor times b^2
on the right. Since the gravitational force is proportional
to mass divided by distance squared, we see that
the two slices cancel: a^2 / a^2 = b^2 / b^2.
Put a lot of tiny double cones together to find that
the sun matter outside the radius of your probe point
causes no force whatsoever, esp. not outward.


Or Superman can, as he did, leave the
inside of the Sun to report on his findings.
I am sure that many posters here would
have wanted me to ask Superman why he
wears his yellowing underwear on the
outside of his pants and neat-o stuff like
that--but he suddenly had to fly off, as
he saw that Lois, in reaching for an aspirin,
had swallowed a suicide pill she was
doing a story on instead and died. Now
Superman would have to travel back in
time a couple of hours to save her... yet
again! [Thank you Mister Smart.]

END THOUGHT EXPERIMENT

Now, what are the implications of this
thought experiment? [Hint: They have
nothing whatever to do with Superman,
and, nor with Lois Lane either.]

1. From the size of the Sun brainiacs've
calculated that the only place in it
where there's enough gravitational
pressure to produce fusion is in a
relatively compact central core. Most
of the Sun is just plasma so loosely
flying about that it's hard for enough
matter to be brought close enough
for atoms & stuff like that to smash
together in order to sustain a fusion
chain-reaction.

2. The only method brainiacs know of
to produce the required pressures is
if gravity is trying to push all the
mass of the Sun into its very core.

3. And yet, as illustrated by Superman's
voyage, the very laws of gravity tell
us that once you start getting closer
and closer to such a central core, the
gravitational pressure should steadily
decrease rather than increase:

The particles close to the center are pulled downwards
a little by gravity, but also by the pressure of the
outer layers - these are quite heavy and also passing
along te pressure from the yet further out layers.

a very
substantial mass of the Sun ought to
be moving away from its central core.

By what force?


Now, most posters here will probably
wish to know if I asked Super Man for
his autograph or something like that.
But, not for those posters but, for those
persons with a mind, some very deeply
fundamental questions about reality will
now have to be addressed:

1. Is the Sun the result of gravity, as
we have heretofore understood gravity?

Obviously


2. Obviously there exists the required
pressure at the Sun's core for fusion
to occur, or the Sun would not be ON.

3. How does that pressure come to be,
if the laws of gravity as we understand
them tell us it ought not exist there!

Ex falsum quodlibet, i.e. you might as well ask
How does the pressure come to be if pigs can fly!


This is certainly a self-contradiction
the existence of which is telling us
something very profound about the
nature of how we understand reality
(apparently we are misunderstanding
it somewhere/somehow).

Is this the pluralis auctoris?
That "we" must refer to you alone.


CONTINUANCE:

These are two self-excluding viewpoints:

One of them can be correct

and is obtained by a few simple thoughts about
the laws of physics (or even a rough approximation
like Newton)

while the other
one is not. But both of them cannot be
correct at the same time: Either gravity exists
AND the center of the Sun (of every star) is
hollow.

There is no reason to assume the sun hollow, in fact
that would contradict the laws of physics as we know them

Or fusion DOES indeed take place
at the center of the stars because the center
of every star is its region of maximum
pressure--and therefore the effect of
gravity is "somehow" negated/voided
inside the stars. *

maximum pressure - zero gravity, so what?