• Question: what do you mean by extreme environments on our sun and other stars

    Asked by Lynx Rufus to Connor on 23 Jun 2015.
    • Photo: Connor Macrae

      Connor Macrae answered on 23 Jun 2015:


      Well, you can’t get much more extreme than a star (except maybe.. black holes). The environment on the surface of the sun is extremely hot, and as it consists of plasma, all material is ionised, this means all the atoms have their orbiting electrons stripped away. More so, some of the phenomena that occur on the surface are incredibly energetic! Solar flares explode with energy 10’000 times more energetic than the biggest nuclear explosion on earth – If such a thing happened on the Earth we would very likely not survive it!

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