Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Why cant we land on the sun?

There's one simple reason why "can we ever land on the surface of the sun(?)" is a silly question...

Suppose we can build something that can withstand all the extreme forms of radiation that are released from the sun such as heat, that is, to put simply, supposed we manage to survive all the extreme conditions from the sun...

It appears that all the "landing on the sun" proponents have forgotten one simple thing: In order to "land" you need a surface, that is, that you need solid material (or liquid if you take a loose definition for the verb "land" where a ship can be on water and be considered to be landed). Moreover, you need enough of this material to form an area for the landing. 

Now, you'll find mostly two materials in the sun, Hydrogen and Helium (I say mostly because it is a common misconception that there's only Hydrogen and Helium in the sun). For Hydrogen to be liquid or solid it has to be at temperatures under −423.17 °F/−252.87°C while Helium -451.8°F/-268.8°C. The coolest places in the sun are the sunspots in the photosphere with temperatures around 7000°F/4000°C where even the heavier, much less common materials such as Iron (which has a boiling point of 4982°F/2750°C) would all still be in a gaseous state. 

(And for all the absolutely technical people out there, I know that the boiling point for these materials in the sun would be different due to the difference in pressure, but it wouldn't be different enough to allow for solid or liquid material, therefore making the discrepancy of low relevance in this argument)

To summarize, no matter how much technology and sci-fi ideas you people come up with; considering the sun's composition; unless you're planning to make the sun's temperature some 500°F lower than Earth's, you CANNOT land on the sun, simply because there's NOTHING you can land on.

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