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How Powerful is the Sun?

How Powerful is the Sun?. P S un joules/sec. = 400,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 watts (= 400 Trillion, Trillion watts!). And this will continue for the Sun’s 10-Billion-Year Lifetime!. Q : What can the Sun do to us from 93,000,000 Miles away?. A : Quite a lot!.

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How Powerful is the Sun?

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  1. How Powerful is the Sun? PSun joules/sec = 400,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 watts (= 400 Trillion, Trillion watts!) • And this will continue for the Sun’s 10-Billion-Year Lifetime!

  2. Q: What can the Sun do to us from 93,000,000 Miles away? A: Quite a lot! The “Solar Constant” 1400 Watts per Square Meter!

  3. Q: What could the Sun’s Power Sourcebe? • A?: • NotChemical Energy • (i.e., “Oxidation/Combustion”… • e.g., “Burning” wood, coal, etc…) • NotGravitational Energy from • “Kelvin-Helmholtz” Contraction… • Only one Power Source sufficient… • => Nuclear Fusion!

  4. Where Nuclear Energy actually comes from…

  5. How to get energy from Nuclear processes… Move towards a “more stable” (more strongly bound) nucleus!

  6. But a Nucleus is full of Positively-Charged Protons… (…what Fundamental Force of Physics could be Strong enough to hold Nuclei together against the Repulsion of “Like Charges”…?) • Yes, that’s right… • It’s the “Strong Force”! • And YES, the particles carrying the Strong Force • are called “Gluons” (No joke!)

  7. Fusion in the Core of the Sun: What it takes… No“Cold Fusion”!

  8. The key reaction of Solar Fusion: The “Proton-Proton Chain” All the Steps… The 1st Step: (…but what are these “ingredients”?)

  9. Q1: What is “Antimatter”? Q2: What happens when “Matter” & “Antimatter” meet?

  10. The 1st Step, Producing a Neutrino… The Proton-Proton Chain, again… {The Opposite Process can also happen… Instead of a Proton changing into a Neutron, and emitting a Neutrino (& a Positron), A Neutron can change into a Proton, and emit an Anti-Neutrino (& an Electron) ! } The Weak Force in Action!

  11. The Particles that make up our Universe… The “Standard Model of Particle Physics” The most elusive sub-atomic particle… the Neutrino…

  12. Neutrinos DON’T “feel” the Strong(Nuclear Binding) or Electromagnetic(Charge)Forces! • They just feel the Weak(Radioactive Decay)Force! (…& a tiny bit of Gravity!)

  13. Why Care about Neutrinos…?  They helped Shape the Universe that we live in! And the tremendous penetrating power of Neutrinos helps us Study the Universe, today!

  14. (Effects of Neutrinos:) Map of Large-Scale Structure of Galaxies:

  15. Where do Neutrinos come from? • The Big Bang! (the “Cosmic Neutrino Background”) • The Sun (produced by nuclear fusion reactions) • The Earth's atmosphere (produced by cosmic rays) • Supernovae within our galaxy (produced by scattering reactions) • The Earth's crust (produced by uranium and thorium decays) • Cosmic accelerators (produced by pion and kaon decays) • Nuclear power plants (produced by nuclear fission reactions) • Neutrino superbeams (produced by pion and kaon decays) • Neutrino factories (produced by muon decays)

  16. Astrophysical and/or Nuclear Neutrino Sources (from “Nature”, and Human-Generated)

  17. Many Neutrinos from the Sun’s core… Where on Earth is best to look for them…?

  18. Some Neutrino Detectors… Super-Kamiokande Borexino

  19. The Unusual Behaviors of Neutrinos can explain some key mysteries of our Universe! (e.g.: The “Solar Neutrino Problem”, Baryogenesis, (Some) Dark Matter…)

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