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[What If?] Could you survive a nanosecond on the Sun? (www.youtube.com)

submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/xkcd

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Original static webpage version: https://what-if.xkcd.com/115/

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[–] makeshiftreaper 28 points 3 months ago (2 children)

I usually feel like I have an intuitive answer to "what ifs?" This one really surprised me to find that the answer is basically "nothing"

[–] dil 8 points 3 months ago

And I was then double surprised that being inside the sun for a nanosecond would be so devastating!

10^-5 J on the surface, when 5 J is needed for a burn
Surface of the sun is a few thousand degrees, inside is a few million

So like a jump off 10^3. No problem, should still be fine.

Not even remotely! I didn't look too close, but the equation he linked has temperature raised to the forth, so a temperature jump of 10^3 would result in 10^12 difference in energy.

Which would increase the 10^-5 J on the surface to 10^7 J. Which explains why you'd only have femtoseconds!

A real double whammy of unintuitive results.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

Yeah I'd have been interested to know how long it would take to suitably warm up from the surface. I guess we'll never know.