My two cents of new wiki stuff for this morning, if you like to add it to the wiki page. Cheers to all.
My two cents of new wiki stuff for this morning, if you like to add it to the wiki page. Cheers to all.
::That is a v.interesting theorem!
The sun's radius is introduced indirectly a long way into the article with the phrase "200,000 km or 70% of the solar radius." If the solar radius is 280,000 km the article should say so early on.
The sun's radius is introduced indirectly a long way into the article with the phrase "200,000 km or 70% of the solar radius." If the solar radius is 280,000 km the article should say so early on.
Revision as of 20:09, 29 November 2009
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I second this. I did the calculation with the numbers given for core radius and solar output and got 35w/m3. -- Grady
Off-topic and science-challenged rant collapsed
68.231.190.2 (talk) 08:01, 14 May 2009 (UTC) The entire discussion of the sun, beginning with einstein theory, which was first postulated by lorentz, which he discarded because it was incorrect, was the right thing to do. The sun , like all the other physical bodies, has resonant frequencies, which vibrates as it passes around the galaxy at about 200 meters per second, its resonant frequencies are that of the varying light energies we receive as these vibrations pass through the media that exists between the sun and the two planet system, the moon and the earth. In the days before the particle theory of light which has been taught for a hundred years is BS, The substance filling the space was once refered to as aether, a complex mixture of materials through which all vibrations in the electromagnetic spectrum are made up of. This substance is everywhere, thus ( The wave theory of light ) new discoveries from the colliders of more than 100 new materials in existence, occupying all space in the solar system, completely destroy the particle theory of light,the physical bodies in our solar system compose around 1.4 % of the solar systems mass. The sun is left without true description because we have yet ti develop materials that will not perish in its atmosphere, nor will we try if we believe the einstianian garble that dominate the pseudo-scientific/ quasi-medical/ legalinsurancefraud/academic caste system that is nothing but academic venture in the business to make money. They say anything. When you descend to the point of teaching theory as fact, then you have lost sight of true education, and are no longer fit for the use intended. The internet can teach a kid in a week what he can learn in a symester, without turning him into a drunk, junkie, or hooking him up with a sexual predatory for a professor. Academia is dead, its time to bury it and start over with learning and data mining techniques. La regime de la pedagogque is over. The information revolution will change the world. all the land is holy land and all the children are equal " goyim " is not a word, stop treating us like one---to the directors of wikipedia[reply]
Same problem with the numbers here (not with the theory, like the previous post!) I added an "expert-needed" notice to that section... the numbers are odd. I have my own consistent numbers, but they might be wrong as well. Probably there are uncertainties also. We really need an expert for this task, not some self appointed one... (been there, done that, not again!) Rnbc (talk) 13:16, 4 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I also agree that the power density is not correct. The 0.27 Watts per cubic meter represents an overall average of the Sun. I'm getting 33.9 watts per cubic meter in the core. The point that humans generate substantial more power per cubic meter is still valid. -- Charlie Moquin —Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.119.155.72 (talk) 05:44, 1 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Edit Request
{{editsemiprotected}} The radius and circumference data is incorrect, check the linked citation for the correct values. I am just going to assume all the other data about The Sun in this "featured article" is also incorrect, but I'm not going to bother with it since this is a "protected page". Nice job ruining hundreds/thousands of children's school reports ya small-brained amateur nazis, lol. No big deal, just a couple orders of magnitude. Of course these errors would have been fixed in seconds by someone like me if it was not a "protected" page. {{editsemiprotected}}—Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.221.82.241 (talk • contribs)
From what i can see (checking the NASA reference) both radius and circumfence are correct - have you noticed that the figures are in meters - not kilometers? (ie. 10³ larger figures). --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 11:41, 22 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Not done: Welcome and thanks for the laugh. Your "edit request" is a fine example of why Wikipedia protects this article from being "fixed" by new or anonymous editors. Priceless! Celestra (talk) 14:52, 22 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Please add an external link to the animated multimedia resource 'The Structure of The Sun' on the Alien Worlds website. This resource was awarded second prize in the UK Association for Learning Technology 'Learning Object Competition 2008'. Please use the following for the link: "An animated explanation of the structure of the Sun, University of Glamorgan" NB.First time request for an edit to a semi-protected page, hope I've submitted correctly, apologies if not. Urbanclearway
Radius and circumference should be expressed in kilometers, see Earth's Physical characteristics for example. <irony>Oh wait, make it in terms of Angstroms, or even better, convert it to hogsehead/kilobyte just to make more sense. </irony> —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.224.54.171 (talk) 19:51, 11 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
More user friendly units of measure please
I found myself having to pull out the calculator repeatedly to make sense of the units in this article. The worst offender is the description of the core whose units are given in solar radii!!! That's self referential!
It would be good to include more conventional units (miles and km) in many places. I would even suggest that the speed of the sun's rotation around the galactic center be translated from km/s into both km/hr and miles/hr, and that Kelvin be translated into both C and F. Keep mind that not only scientist read an encyclopedia article about the sun. American (and metric) kids do too and it would be nice if this article were more approachable. Yes translating the units in this way results in huge numbers but it also helps lay people grasp the magnitude of the sun. Cshay (talk) 21:22, 7 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I'm glad you're complaining, Cshay, this thing is *not* supposed to be a science research paper. (Likewise, too many of the references are not suitable for intelligent laypeople - not even science undergrads.) But it's easy to forget that while trying to keep things up to date. I'd encourage you to try to estimate rather than whip out the calculator. If it helps, K is very close to C for large temperatures. A km is very close to 2/3 of a mile. It's hard to write science articles that are accurate, up-to-date, and readable for the average educated person. (And ... at what level?!) Definitely, too many tech/science articles on WP are too complex. (Many of the bio articles make me gasp.) But science uses hundreds of units, and it's hard to be 'science-literate' without grasping the common ones. Twang (talk) 21:32, 25 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I disagree. And besides this has been discussed before. If we start putting all sorts of different unit conversions in for every measurement we will get an extremely cluttered article. This makes it highly unreadable. Science works in SI (aka metric). All over the world. There are standard units sometimes used in a particular field outside metric (e.g. astronomical unit which is the earth/sun distance) and it is appropriate to use those figures in an article. For example "The sun is 149.6 million km (1 AU) from the Earth". Also including miles, yards, feet, centimetres (or whatever takes one person's fancy) in brackets is just silly. If you need an accurate figure for a calculation then you are going to use the SI number. Other than that, in astronomy you can probably look at 15 million K and say "that's hot". Jim77742 (talk) 05:21, 30 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
It's been discussed before? Well don't even get me started on my dislike for archivebots. They lead to repetitious discussion pages don't they? Anyway, you are looking at this issue as a scientist and also as someone concerned with clutter? How about being concerned about the 95% of the audience who are not scientists? How come the worldbook encyclopedia I read as a kid didn't use Kelvins in place of Celcius? That's right, and it's because they were trying to make something readable by lay people. It seems a cabal of scientists has banded together and decided that Wikipedia will read like a university research journal, everyone else be damned (this is not the only article with this problem) Cshay (talk) 06:07, 18 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Metric is the only system that has any kind of international validity. We should try to use proper, grown-up measurements. I always avoid ells, drams, barleycorns, scruples and mutchkins; miles and inches are just as inappropriate. 124.170.123.65 (talk) 14:29, 28 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
What about amu's? Are they deprecated for atom masses? Or AU's? Or g/cm3 when we're not trying to be prissy correct like in papers with kg-1/m-3? They're used because they're conveniently sized. We certainly don't use Imperial, though. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 17:32, 27 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I'm guessing this uses the short scale but aint the long scale more appropiate for scientific data? It has a constant with an homogenous proportion unlike the short scale, just like the metric system is better to handle data than the imperial system...Undead Herle King (talk) 04:28, 6 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
In the middle of the third paragraph in section 1 ("The Sun's motion and location within the galaxy"), you can read:
>>It takes the Solar System about 225–250 million years to complete one orbit of the galaxy (a galactic year),[32] so it is thought to have completed 20–25 orbits during the lifetime of the Sun and 1/1250th of a revolution since the origin of humans.
1/1250 of a revolution gives at most 250 million years / 1250 = 200 000 years elapsed since the origin of humans. Doesn't it look more like the actual number of revolutions completed since then is either 1/125 or 1/250? By the way, they could be written, respectively, as "one 125th" and "one 250th", but not "1/125th" (that could even be interpreted to mean the reciprocal of one 125th, i.e., 125) and "1/250th". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.209.55.88 (talk) 16:06, 8 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I've removed the reference to the origin of humans as it isn't a useful astronomical measure. There are also uncertainties about that date relating to how we interpret the fossil and DNA evidence of our ancestors. --TS22:30, 8 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Correction to reference 126
{{editsemiprotected}} Reference 126 needs to have its page numbers corrected. The correct page numbers should be 388-393 instead of 288-293. This can be verified by looking at the Google PDF of this journal at:
On the second line of the subsection titled "Core" the value for the core temperature seems to be wrong. Currently it reads "close to 13,600,000 Kelvin", while the temperature in "Physical characteristics" is "~15.7×10^6 K". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.50.110.124 (talk) 06:25, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Plages
The plages article is currently orphaned. My Intro to Modern Stellar Astrophysics 2nd Ed, by Dale A Ostlie and Bradley W. Carrol, defines
"plages ... are chromospheric regions of bright Halpha emission located near active sunspots". More detail is in the plages article. It seems to me that the section on Sunspots would be the place to mention plages and link to the plages article. Puzl bustr (talk) 14:47, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Temperature of the Core
This article features two significantly different temperatures for the core of the sun. The infobox gives the temperature as around 15.7 million kelvin, backed up by the NASA fact sheet it references. The main text of the article gives the temperature at 13.6 million kelvin. I'm not qualified to decide which is the right number, but would someone who is please fix this? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.107.38.136 (talk) 10:47, 13 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Chemical Composition
The article gives some fairly precise detail on the chemical composition of the photosphere and some sketch information about the chemical composition of the core of the sun, but it would be nice to also include some information on the _overall_ chemical composition of the sun. I have no access to either journals or textbooks, but this NASA source suggests some values: http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/961112a.html. Perhaps someone could compare with some published authoritative source and add the information.
Consumption of hydrogen is wrong
In the Core section it says:
...converted into helium nuclei every second ... or about 4.4 × 10^9 kg per second,[49] releasing energy at the matter–energy conversion rate of 4.26 million metric tons per second...
These two figures are near enough the same when the first should be very roughly 100x bigger, which suggests a mix up. The second one is probably correct but I don't have a figure for the first. Man with two legs (talk) 17:19, 17 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
According to the Phillips source (Guide to the Sun, Cambridge University Press, 1995, ISBN 052139788X, p. 53) there are 9.2·1037 occurrences of the proton-proton chain each second. Each such reaction uses four protons so the mass rate at which protons are converted into helium nuclei will be
9.2·1037 sec-1×4×1.007276 amu = 6.2·1011 kg/s or so.
Since the mass of the helium-4 nucleus is 4.001506 amu and the proton mass is 1.007276 amu, each reaction liberates around (4×1.007276 − 4.001506)/(4×1.007276) = 0.68% of the fused mass as energy. So, the total mass conversion rate is 0.68% of 6.2·1011 kg/s, which is 4.2·109 kg/s or so. Multiplying this by c2 gives the solar luminosity of 3.8·1026 watts.
This article has changed immensely since it was designated an FA. The lead, in particular, has gotten thick to the point of near-unreadability by the average person. There's simply too much detail for a lead. And yet, the lead also seems to be missing some stuff that it needs per the WP:LEAD requirement to be a summary of the whole article. I'm going to see what I can do in the next hour, but I doubt I can finish it in that time. Unschool03:19, 28 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, I've removed some detail that would be better left in the body (and, I'm guessing, is already there, though I have to go back and put it in the body if it is now missing), and I've really cut down on the numbers. This lead is supposed to be easily accessible, readable, to the average joe, and the numbers were simply unnecessary to convey the concepts, which is what the lead needs to do. Unschool04:27, 28 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Distance ambiguity
It is unclear whether the distance from the sun to the earth (149.6 units) is taken from the center of the sun or the surface of the sun. If from the center, the distance from the surface would be 148.9 units since the sun radius is 0.7 units. If from the surface, then one would have to add 0.7 to 149.6 yielding 150.4 units. This matter affects all planetary distances, not just earth-sun, but it needs to be clarified somewhere. 69.108.2.81 (talk) 21:19, 13 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Ahad's Sphere
A moderately interesting theorem that computes how far Sol's light dominion spreads out into the universe in a spherical formation, is to be found on these links [1][2].
My two cents of new wiki stuff for this morning, if you like to add it to the wiki page. Cheers to all.
That is a v.interesting theorem!
The sun's radius is introduced indirectly a long way into the article with the phrase "200,000 km or 70% of the solar radius." If the solar radius is 280,000 km the article should say so early on.
Well, that debate came to the wrong decision. WP:THE is the guiding page and its application here is clear. I also dispute that the closer of the debate correctly determined consensus - certainly not on a pure vote count, and definitely not if established naming convention is given the greater weight appropriate. Sam Blacketer (talk) 22:54, 14 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
If you feel that way, you can certainly ask for a review or a renewed discussion. However, it would not be appropriate to arbitrarily change the redirect without said discussion. I'd also point out that the earlier discussion did consider WP:THE, that the British paper (while certainly very popular) is not the only paper using that title, and that the original nominator actually changed his proposal in order to have "The Sun" redirect to "Sun". --Ckatzchatspy23:09, 14 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I think it should be reopened per WP:CCC. The point about the naming guideline is that it ought to have far more weight in the issue; it's effectively up to those arguing a different outcome to contend why the guideline should be ignored on this occasion. The original proposer of the move actually made his proposal more extreme, given that he started by proposing The Sun as a disambiguation page. There might be a case for a separate disambiguation page for newspapers called The Sun given that there is no article on the former London evening paper (1792-1871). Sam Blacketer (talk) 23:27, 14 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
With regards to WP:CCC, yes, of course consensus can change - but that is usually considered in regards to long-standing matters when significant opposition arises, not relatively minor issues that were debated and concluded a short time ago. With regards to the guideline, the consideration was that in this case, "The Sun" was far more commonly thought to refer to the star rather than the other references, let alone to a single paper. In part, that reflects an international perspective. --Ckatzchatspy23:46, 14 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Short version, no. "Sol" is the proper Latin name, while "Sun" is the proper name in English (per the IAU). "Sol" is used in science fiction, but not in real-world applications. Similarly, the Latin "Luna" is not the proper English name for the Moon. For more on the Sun-Sol issue, search through the talk page archives, as it has come up repeatedly. --Ckatzchatspy04:47, 20 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
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Not done: Welcome and thanks for the laugh. Your "edit request" is a fine example of why Wikipedia protects this article from being "fixed" by new or anonymous editors. Priceless! Celestra (talk) 14:52, 22 June 2009 (UTC)
Done - Well spotted, thanks! ∙ AJCham(talk) 00:18, 23 September 2009 (UTC)