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Feb. 26, 2005 The specific gravity of iron is about 7.9, and that means iron is 7.9 times as heavy as water, which weighs 62.4 pounds per cubic foot, or 1000 kilograms per cubic meter. The specific gravities of carbon, copper and limestone are 1.8, 8.9 and 2.9, though carbon and limestone vary. The specific gravity of the whole Earth is supposed to be 5.5, which, for me, is easy to believe, but hard to check. I just accept it, as midway between limestone and iron, which I can check. The radius of the Earth is about 3961 miles, which converts to about 6,375,000 meters. From that, we can calculate that the volume of the Earth is about 1,085,000,000,000,000,000,000 cubic meters, and that the mass is about 5,969,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 kilograms. The Earth's mean orbital distance from the Sun is around 93,000,000 miles, or 149,600,000,000 meters, which gives us an orbital length of about 940,000,000,000 meters, and since the length of the solar year is about 31,560,000 seconds, we can determine that the orbital velocity of the Earth is about 29,785 meters a second or 66,600 miles an hour. The gravitational attraction existing between the Sun and the Earth is the analogue of a string that holds a ball when someone twirls it. If the string should break, the ball would go flying off, away from the hand of the twirler, and this means that even before the string broke, there was a centrifugal force in the ball, arising from the fact that it was being continuously constrained to follow an orbit, when otherwise it would have gone in a straight line. And there is a centrifugal force tending to make the Earth fly off into space as well. This centirfugal force is precisely counterbalanced by a centripetal force, the force of attraction between the Sun and the Earth, which holds the Earth neatly in place age after age. The string never breaks. The centripetal force of the Earth towards the Sun can be derived from an old, established formula: Force = Mass of Sun x Mass of Earth x Gravitational Constant / Radius squared. Here the radius is the mean orbital distance of the Earth from the Sun, and the Gravitational Constant, which I cannot personally verify but which has been proven and accepted since the time of Newton, is .00000000006672 units, the units being a compound of units that I won't go into. The centrifugal force is given by another formula: Force = Mass of Earth x Acceleration. The acceleration in question is the centrifugal acceleration, which may be determined by another formula: Acceleration = Velocity squared / Radius. This formula is not empirical; it is purely geometrical, and can be derived by means of calculus. I myself have gone over it several times. The radius in question is the same as in the first formula, and the velocity is the orbital velocity of the Earth around the Sun, as quantified above. This acceleration works out to about .00593 meters per second per second. Multiplying this by the mass of the earth, we find a centrifugal force of about 35,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Newtons, a Newton being .2248 pounds. The published mass of the Sun is 1,989,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 kilograms. If we solve the first equation given above, using the masses of the Sun and the Earth, the orbital distance of the Earth from the Sun, and the gravitational constant, we get the same numerical value for the centripetal force as above, if we allow for some minute errors because of rounding. Thus we have balanced all the equations perfectly, using demonstrable formulas and known quantities, except for the gravitational constant, and can feel confident that the published mass of the Sun is correct. Corollarily, if we accept the published mass of the Sun as correct to start with, we have proved that the gravitational constant is correct. Another quantity that I can easily believe but cannot personally check is the solar energy flux density, 1370 Watts per square meter. This says that 1370 Watts of sunlight falls on each square meter, measured perpendicular to the rays of the Sun, at the upper boundary of the atmosphere. Equating that solar flux with fourteen 100-Watt lightbulbs, I see that it must be about right. The area of the surface of a sphere equals 4 x pi x Radius squared. If we calculate the area of a sphere centered on the Sun, with its surface out at the orbital distance of the Earth from the Sun, and multiply the answer by 1370 Watts per meter, we find that the Sun must be generating around 385,300,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Watts of power. This last figure is called solar luminosity. Power equals energy per unit of time. Thus we can also say that the Sun generates 385,300,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Joules of energy every second. If we enter this into the famous equation, energy = mass x speed of light squared, the speed of light being 299,800,000 meters a second, we can figure out that the required mass is 4,287,000,000 kilograms. On the basis of the latest version of the laws of conservation of mass and energy, then, in order for the Sun to generate such power, its mass must be dwindling at the rate of 4,287,000,000 kilograms a second. The mass is converted to energy. Physicists say that the thermonuclear reaction that generates solar energy involves the fusion of hydrogen atoms into helium atoms, with a concomitant mass loss of .007. Thus 1000 kilograms of hydrogen fuse to 993 kilograms of helium, and the balance of 7 kilograms is converted to energy in accordance with Einstein's formula. Thus, every second, about 612,429,000,000 kilograms of hydrogen are reduced to about 608,142,000,000 kilograms of helium for the creation of sunshine. If we assume that astronomers and physicists are right when they say that the age of the Sun is 4,600,000,000 years, the total mass loss, at the rate given above would be about 622,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 kilograms, less than 1/3000 of the present mass of the Sun. So the Sun could easily be 4,600,000,000 years old. The Sun has what it takes apparently. This all sounds entirely plausible to me. ------------ About the author Thomas Keyes: I have written two books: A SOJOURN IN ASIA (non-fiction) and A TALE OF UNG (fiction), neither published so far. I have studied languages for years and traveled extensively on five continents. Email: udikeyes@yahoo.com Tell a friend about this site! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com and are not allowed to be posted on other websites. ARTICLE THIEVES WILL BE PROSECUTED! |
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