Orodruin said:This should be pretty easy to compute. The Sun's mass composition can be readily found on the internet, as can the densities of liquid hydrogen and helium, which are the Sun's main components. Just take the masses of hydrogen and helium and compute the corresponding volume using the densities.
I thought that too, but then the gases change density from surface to core, so I thought a simple computation might not solve this.Orodruin said:This should be pretty easy to compute. The Sun's mass composition can be readily found on the internet, as can the densities of liquid hydrogen and helium, which are the Sun's main components. Just take the masses of hydrogen and helium and compute the corresponding volume using the densities.
But this was not the question as I read it. The question as I read it is just "if the hydrogen and helium were liquid of the typical densities, how much volume would it occupy". It is obviously not going to happen in reality.snorkack said:No, it isn´t.
Hydrogen and helium will be self-compressed by gravity.
White dwarf mass-radius relationships won´t help, either, because white dwarfs are carbon or heavier.
You do not need the volume of the gases. You just need the mass.dennis_n said:I thought that too, but then the gases change density from surface to core, so I thought a simple computation might not solve this.
Janus said:The average density of the Sun is 1410 kg/m3
Liquid hydrogen has a density of only 70 kg/m3
Thus the Sun is already denser than liquid hydrogen would be.
If you were to remove the energy source that keeps the Sun from collapsing, it would compress until its core reaches a state of electron degeneracy. At this point you have the equivalent of a White Dwarf, and an object with a radius comparable to the Earth's.
dennis_n said:Thanks! I learned something new today.
dennis_n said:I never thought to search for average density. It was faulty logic to assume that an extremely compressed plasma core wouldn't increase the average density to more than that of a liquid or solid state. Might be the public misconception that stars are mainly bodies of "Gas" and "Plasma" and we conceive both of these as very light, only experiencing gas as the air around us and thinking of plasma as an even more expanded form of it. Thanks! I learned something new today.
If the sun were to freeze, it would actually decrease in size. This is because the sun's volume is primarily made up of gas, which would condense and shrink as it freezes.
If the sun were to freeze, it would not have a significant impact on the Earth's orbit. This is because the sun's mass would remain the same, and therefore its gravitational pull on the Earth would not change.
No, a frozen sun would not emit light or heat. It would essentially become a giant frozen ball of gas, with no nuclear fusion occurring to produce energy.
The sun freezing is highly unlikely, as it is constantly producing heat and energy through nuclear fusion. It would require a massive decrease in temperature, which is not possible in the sun's current state.
The frozen sun would not have a significant impact on other planets in our solar system. Its gravitational pull and mass would remain the same, and it would continue to orbit the center of the solar system as normal.