It was suggested in another thread that it can. So can it?
I would like answers based on physics, not belief, please.
I would like answers based on physics, not belief, please.
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Can the Sun Shine Upon Itself?
- Thread starter SalixIncendium
- Start date
No, light travels in straight lines. Any light from the sun will travel directly away from it at a fast rate of knots.
But a strategically placed mirror could redirect sunlight back at the sun although thats not precisely shining on itself
But a strategically placed mirror could redirect sunlight back at the sun although thats not precisely shining on itself
Depends upon how you look at it. Can the eye see itself? If you hold a mirror to it, sure.
Jedster
Flying through space
My thoughts exactly.
In the mirror the eye sees an image of itself.
If it is getting close to a black hole it can, because space will bend directing a portion of the light back upon the sun. Still...that won't last long, because the sun will be going into that black hole soon after. Maybe if it was in orbit around a black hole? At just the right distance light from the corona might reach around. You'd have a 'Black hole sun', but would it "Wash away the rain?"
That is true. It can't actually see itself with itself. Seeing a reflection of itself, is not seeing itself. Thanks for that detail.
Cooky
Veteran Member
Yes, because it's illuminated from it's core and throughout. Every square millimeter of the sun is illuminated.
Unless you're asking if the rays of light emitted somehow return... Which seems a rather odd thing to consider.
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A mere technicality.
Technically the sun is more than one thing. Its zillions of tiny reactions are all in one location. Each of those shines on each other part. If you look at the filament in a lightbulb, it's a strand, but the light from one end of that strand hits the other end, and vice versa. Each individual reaction, at the subatomic level, cannot shine on itself. The phrasing would be more accurate if it said the sun can shine within itself, not on itself.
Course I'm probably wrong. Where's Sheldon Cooper when we need him? I did google it in physics places, and there was no answer there, so I imagine either physicists consider it irrelevant, or the answer it so obvious they don't want to consider it.
As i understand it, light is given off by the sun when energy reaches the surface, internally its far to dense to contain visible light.
For the last time, @SalixIncendium, I do NOT glow in the dark! The rumors you started after discovering I dated a girl from Nagasaki while at university are WHOLLY unfounded!
But an important distinction. I use the "eye cannot see itself with itself" to explain why seeking Truth outside ourselves is not possible. The eye looking to see itself will never actually see itself. That "mirror" response always bugged me.
I was going to give you a "useful" frube, but I upgraded you to a like for the Soundgarden reference.
If the photosphere of the sun has topography, it is possible that light from the most elevated points could encounter sunshine from nearby lower elevated points. That would be quite limited in extent, however.
It does contain 'visible light', meaning light of the appropriate wavelengths. it's just that the mean path between collisions is small, so the light doesn't propagate very far. But, in a collision, it will be absorbed and re-emitted.
As you go down into the sun, the frequencies will increase as the temperature does, so the 'light' close to the core is more gamma rays than anything visible.
What do you mean by the phrase 'shine on itself'?
if you are asking if light from the sun can travel in such a way that it is reflected off the sun and then enter your eyes, no. I'm not sure how to make sense of the question past that.
Heyo
Veteran Member
Strategically placed mirrors could have even more practical uses. They could redirect sunlight to power stations and form a Dyson Swarm or redirect all light at a single direction forming a Shkadov Thruster.
I understood the densities to be so great that much higher frequencies than visible light were the norm. Only at the (or near the surface) could visible light exist.