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: Jupiter (was PERIHELION etc.)



L!

I would hope your reference would be consistent. i.e. the energy flux
would be at the radius they give for J's "surface". Did the IR probe
report the flux as it fell past the surface of did it compare the Solar
constant with the flux from J some distance from J? JPL are the people
to ask.

Your reference included the below as reasons J is not a just failed star.

"Jupiter is not a failed star

While Jupiter resembles the Sun in composition, it is not a "failed
star" as sometimes suggested:

* 80 times smaller than the smallest stars
* Formed first from a rocky "seed" core that gathered hydrogen,
helium, and volatiles from the surrounding proto-solar nebula.
* Inner core is solid (rock & ice)"

I dispute the second two (the first is quite sufficient). Did not the
sun form on high Z material just as all the planets? When the pressure
and temp. became high enuff for nuclear reactions much of the high Z
material was transmuted (if necessary) first? Besides we know higher Z
than 2 exist in much of the sun. [someone got the Nobel for postulating
carbon?]

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/tables/suncomp.html

for the core:

http://www.astro.yale.edu/DEPT/research/papers/pd21abst.html


The third, so what.

bc




Ludwik Kowalski wrote:

On Tuesday, Jan 6, 2004, Brian Whatcott wrote:



I was a little uneasy that Ludwik used the same
radius for computing the Jovian insolation and
the radio-active heating. Different effective radii,
I would have supposed. Perhaps this could
account for some of the discrepancy. I don't recall
that Kelvin had the Earth shrinking when he
computed Earth's age based on thermal cooling,
pre radio-active explanations..



The question about the radius is not trivial. Perhaps
somebody knows how to answer it. What troubles
me is this:

Solar constant of 120 W/m^2 does not change
significantly when one goes away from the
"surface" of Jupiter by another radius or two.
But the estimated number of W/m^2 emitted from
the center (?) of the planet is reduced by the factor
of four when the radius is doubled.

Therefore the estimated energy emission density
changes rapidly with the radius. I used 180 W/m^2
and assumed that this average number is valid at
"my textbook radius", 7*10^7 m. In other words,
Jupiter, in my Fermi-like estimation model, was a
solid sphere in a vacuum. For a larger radius (still
using 180 W/m^2) the amount of K-40 would be
larger.

Please show how to make a more accurate
estimate of "joules per seconds" attributed to a
source of energy in Jupiter on the basis of
known experimental facts.
Ludwik Kowalski