Shrinking Sun

quote:

---

Yes, the sun does occilate at a given time each day.

---

Really? Day is an earth centric measurement, no? You’re saying the Sun and Earth have some sort of tie which effects the Sun’s oscillation? How does that work, or did I misunderstand you?

Good question Trae. I'd sure like to see some back up for that statment.

Ned, could you tell me what's going on? I don't know what he is talking about when he said the sun "occilate" at a given time each day.

---

The Laminator

​

The oscillating sun is correct as far as I know. But it's on a basis of months or years IIRC. I don't understand the daily thing either.

I apologize for not citing my source, but its been a while since i read it. When I first learned of the shrinking sun debate, I became very excited, as I am a creationist. When I did some deeper digging, I found that an experiment done recently concluded that the sun is not shrinking. The main point for shrinking sun (ss) proponents was that more than half of the needed neutrinos were missing. Their opponents claimed that the neutrinos shifted types. As I said, they recently set up an experiment that proved them correct.

As I understand it there is some sort of oscillation, much like the ocean tides could be considered an oscillation. I'm not sure of the time scales, but it could be over a short period. I think this is more a curiosity than anything else, and probably not of much importance.There is also the 11 year sunspot cycle (really 23 years, since the 11 year changes alternate). The thermal output of the sun does vary during the sunspot cycle. The intensity of the sunspot cycle varies too, over a longer period. I don't think it is known whether the change in intensity is itself cyclic.As far as I know, there isn't any evidence for a long term trend of solar output change. It is expected that the sun will eventually become a red giant. But that's a very long way off, so nothing to cause us immediate concern.

To my knowledge, the oscillation was proposed to explain the shrinkage. With the aforementioned experiment, no one has updated their position on the oscillations of the shrinking. I may be wrong, but it would seem that the sun would shrink anyway given that thermonuclear fusion gives off considerable energy, and the molecules formed would not stay within the sun's most powerful part of gravitational fields. I have been more interested in the biochemical part of the debate more recently, but I intend to turn my attention back to astrophysics and cosmology at the end of the semester. Due to this I don't think I can satisfactorly answer your points.

I remember hearing reports of shrinkage, maybe 30 years ago or so. Most scientists were skeptical. The shrinkage didn't check out once further measurements were made.

If my memory serves me correctly, the original report was falsified by the reports you're talking about. But a scientist named Gilliland, I think, in his report, claimed that there could be (emphasis on could) a shrinkage rate of .002 (or .02) seconds of arc per century. This could be due to what I think about the source of the shrinkage as I said in my last post, but as of yet, no one has revised their position of shrinkage since that experiment. I am not sure, but I think that there is a report on this debate at: Answers in Genesis

I'll remain skeptical, until more evidence is in. A lot is known about climate variation over long periods of time. If there is any shrinkage, it would have to be very very small.I would caution against using answeringenesis.org as a source for scientific information.

Actually I think that the loss of mass the sun suffers will make it increase in size. The star is essentially a ball of gas which shrinks due to its large gravitiational field. The gas heats up and eventually 'ignites' and a fusion reaction begins. The increased temperature increases the pressure, and eventually the shrinking due to gravity is balanced by the pressure due to temperature. Thus, as the mass decreases when the energy is released the gravitational field decreases, and the pressure starts winning the battle, resulting in a red giant. Obviously this isn't the case in every star, it depends on the initial mass. It is the fate that awaits our star though, IIRC.

I'm going on memory but I think this is not the reason that we expect the sun to bloat. The mass loss used to produce it's energy isn't great enough to be the issue.What will happen is the hydrogen will become depleted and the sun will start to undergo other fusion reactions. These will supply new sources of energy and will bloat the outer layers of the sun.I could, of course, be VERY wrong here. Hopefully someone who knows something will hop in here.

I think I may have had a badly worded post (coupled with being tired and not thinking straight). My point was meant to be that a loss of mass will cause the sun the increase in size due to the pressure, rather than decrease. Not that it would increase by red dwarf proportions. In it's normal state the gravitational forces cause the star to shrink and the thermal pressure cause it to grow. I would imagine that is why the sun oscilates in size, the gravity causes it to shrink, increases the pressure and then the pressure causes it to grow, decreasing the pressure.This message has been edited by happy_atheist, 10-29-2005 02:10 PM

Hi Ned... The giant phase begins not with "other fusion reactions" but more hydrogen fusion, only not in the core but further out. This increases the effective pressure in the outer layers and you get the expansion. The lack of hydrogen burning in the core causes a drop in local pressure, and local gravitational collapse. This heats the core to the point where helium burning can begin. If sudden enough, this gives rise to the "heluium flash".

During my lifetime their has been thousands of coronal mass ejections
shooting trillions of tons of gas from the sun into space. Compute that into billions of years as the evolutionists say the age of the sun is, would of made the sun so large that life on earth would not of been possible until recently.
Nobody is going to tell me that all that mass ejected from the sun didnt effect the size of the sun and that it just oscillates. Never getting any smaller. And if it does it just pops right back again.
The graph I saw posted means nothing. I have done plenty of research in this field and plenty of reputable scientists agree that the sun is shrinking.
Just like the moon is moving away from the earth. Calculate that back in time one billion years and you would have the tides washing across the earth twice a day. Not a very good enviroment for life to form like the evolutionests say happened 3.2 billion years ago.
The conservation of angular momentum would demand that all the galaxys after the big bang spin in the same direction yet they find galaxys spinning backwards.
These are just a few problems evolutionests have there are hundreds more.
We see a nova or a super nova about every thirty years. They know of about 300 nova's or super nova's. If the universe is 20 billion years old we should see thousands of them.
The earth is losing strength in its magnetic field. Calculate the rate of decomposition back ten thousand years and the earth would of had the magnetic field of a white dwarf star. No life would of been able to live.
Evolution is NOT science its wishful thinking.
They would have you believe that all science believes in it. Not so.
Forty five percent of scientists believe in creation. Albert Einstien believed in creation.
If evolutionists want to believe their ancesters came from rocks thats ok with me,just do your math, but dont call evolution science.