this post was submitted on 31 Aug 2024
112 points (95.9% liked)

Ask Science

8633 readers
5 users here now

Ask a science question, get a science answer.


Community Rules


Rule 1: Be respectful and inclusive.Treat others with respect, and maintain a positive atmosphere.


Rule 2: No harassment, hate speech, bigotry, or trolling.Avoid any form of harassment, hate speech, bigotry, or offensive behavior.


Rule 3: Engage in constructive discussions.Contribute to meaningful and constructive discussions that enhance scientific understanding.


Rule 4: No AI-generated answers.Strictly prohibit the use of AI-generated answers. Providing answers generated by AI systems is not allowed and may result in a ban.


Rule 5: Follow guidelines and moderators' instructions.Adhere to community guidelines and comply with instructions given by moderators.


Rule 6: Use appropriate language and tone.Communicate using suitable language and maintain a professional and respectful tone.


Rule 7: Report violations.Report any violations of the community rules to the moderators for appropriate action.


Rule 8: Foster a continuous learning environment.Encourage a continuous learning environment where members can share knowledge and engage in scientific discussions.


Rule 9: Source required for answers.Provide credible sources for answers. Failure to include a source may result in the removal of the answer to ensure information reliability.


By adhering to these rules, we create a welcoming and informative environment where science-related questions receive accurate and credible answers. Thank you for your cooperation in making the Ask Science community a valuable resource for scientific knowledge.

We retain the discretion to modify the rules as we deem necessary.


founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

Like fossil fuels come from organic matter that grew because of the sun. Is there any form of energy on that cannot be traced back to the sun in some way?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Syd@lemm.ee 7 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Where did the Sun's energy come from?

[–] palordrolap@fedia.io 19 points 2 months ago (2 children)

The gravitational collapse of a cloud of mostly hydrogen in the vacuum of space.

And anything falling together under gravity was given that kinetic energy from somewhere* and ultimately it can all be traced back to the Big Bang.

As for where that energy came from, it's possible we'll never know. Most organised religions (and no doubt a few disorganised ones) have their theories, of course. You may subscribe to one of these.

* This is the principle most commonly simplified as "what goes up, must come down"

[–] catloaf@lemm.ee 8 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

What's really interesting is that "what goes up, must come down" doesn't hold at the scale of the universe. A naive thinker might imagine big bangs happen in cycles, but in fact this doesn't appear to be the case, because space itself is expanding faster than galaxies are falling back together. And it's not just faster now, but it's accelerating! At some point, space will be expanding faster than the speed of light, and because of that, the entire universe will disappear from our view.

Despite that, the Milky Way galaxy is still close enough to the Andromeda galaxy that they'll collide in about 5 billion years, so don't worry, there's still interesting things to come! If you want to see it, though, you'll need to be somewhere other than Earth, because by that time the Sun will have advanced in its life cycle enough to render Earth completely uninhabitable by all known forms of life.

[–] AmosBurton_ThatGuy@lemmy.ca 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Just to add onto this comment, it's thought that the Sun is slowly getting hotter and more energetic as it gets older and in approximately 1 billion years, the Sun will be hot enough to render the Earth uninhabitable for life as we know it.

In approximately 5 billion years, the Sun will reach the end of its life and expand into a red giant, swallowing up Mercury, Venus and potentially Earth in the process. Interestingly, once the Sun reaches this phase of its life, it could potentially warm up some of the outer moons enough for them to have liquid water, if they can hold onto an atmosphere of course.

Someone please correct me if I said anything wrong, I'm just a casual space nerd and not a professional astronomer.

[–] threelonmusketeers@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Ran we starlift the Sun to make it last longer?

[–] palordrolap@fedia.io 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

What does "lift" mean in this context? A web search turns up a Doris Day musical from 1951 which is kind of funny to think about but I'm guessing is not what you mean.

As for the general case of modifying the Sun - or any star - in some way, it's all but certain to need a huge number of resources (or amount of energy, or both), and considering the Sun is on the order of a million times larger than Earth, far more than can be obtained from Earth alone.

I mean, I'd like to be proven wrong and there's some exotic-physics way of causing the helium in the Sun to spontaneously turn back into hydrogen, but if that was easy, you'd expect that we'd see stars do that by themselves occasionally. We don't, which implies there would still need to be some kind of energy input required to get it started.

Without exotic physics, we'd pretty much need on the order of the energy that the star had output from birth up to that point, and if we had that, we'd be better off using that energy in other ways.

We could get all Earth life off Earth and into a self-sustaining, space-faring habitat with a minuscule fraction of the resources. We might be better off aiming for something like that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_lifting

any of several hypothetical processes by which a sufficiently advanced civilization could remove a substantial portion of a star's matter which can then be re-purposed, while possibly optimizing the star's energy output and lifespan at the same time

[–] uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 2 months ago

Brane cosmology suggests the collision of two branes can result in a big bang event, but yes, that is beyond an event horizon.