Chronology Current Month Current Thread Current Date
[Year List] [Month List (current year)] [Date Index] [Thread Index] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Date Prev] [Date Next]

Re: Thermal Energy - thermalization of rotational energy



Michael Edmiston asked:

Anyway, if gravity drives the formation of a solar system
from a revolving dust cloud, and some of the revolutional
momentum and energy goes into individiual rotations, then
can that process reverse, short of supernova?"

Suppose the rapidly rotating atomic nucleus of high Z,
for example, produced from a peripheral collision with
a heavy ion of ~10 MeV/amu, undergoes fission. The
initial "spin" can be as high as 60 h-bar and more. I suppose
that a sizable part of the total angular momentum goes back
to the "orbital" part while the rest goes into spinning
fragments. That would be like a little supernova, I suppose,
except that the "star" exists for less than a 10^-15 seconds.
(As far as nuclear equilibration is concerned this time
interval is very long, certainly enough to forget about
how the fissioning compound nucleus was created.)
Ludwik Kowalski