(urth) "been teaching literature for over 35 years"
Marc Aramini
marcaramini at yahoo.com
Mon Sep 9 06:58:16 PDT 2013
Curious Gerry, do you have an extensive physics background? I have a biochem degree and I really love math to the more concrete calculus but physics was always one of my least favorite fields. If I were writing something this is the kind of information I would certainly gloss over, though of course half life and radioactive decay are familiar since I dealt with them all the time in chemistry.
Sent from my iPhone
On Sep 9, 2013, at 6:50 AM, "Gerry Quinn" <gerry at bindweed.com> wrote:
>
>
> From: David Stockhoff
> On 9/9/2013 8:42 AM, Gerry Quinn wrote:
>
>>
>> > It doesn't matter (in engineering terms) whether stuff that reaches the > event horizon goes somewhere else or not (that's kind of the definition > of an event horizon). But an accretion disk outside the Schwarzschild > radius is just standard dynamics for any super-condensed object. At a > distance of several Schwarzschild radii, Newtonian physics will be > reasonably accurate (albeit not in detail).
>
>> Which is why I don't like the idea that the object has non-Newtonian effects outside/beyond the Sun.
>
> Well, it could emit penetrating particles that have a heating effect when absorbed by matter.
>
> Say it emitted a large pulse of particles similar to neutrinos, with a sufficiently small capture cross section that they could go through the Earth without much attenuation, but still much more absorbable by matter than neutrinos. If you give them a penetration depth of several Earth diameters, then for every 10^12 tons or so mass-equivalent emitted in this form from the sun, you would heat the Earth by one degree. A few hundred times that amount emitted over a period of might be enough to restart tectonic activity. However, you then have the problem that it needs to be emitted over a rather long period, or the seas would boil, and the land would also become uncomfortably hot. I think however if this radiation was absorbed chiefly by iron and similar heavy metals, life-threatening consequences would be mitigated, especially if the pulse lasted a few hours. (This should also prevent dramatic consequences for Jupiter and Saturn. Skuld might have problems, though, if it is still inhabited.)
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> - Gerry Quinn
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