Is the size of a planet or star limited by the laws of physics? Could there be a planet as large as our sun, or a star as large as our solar system?

 Yes, the laws of physics limit the radii of planets and stars (we talk about the radius here because mass is heft, while size means dimensions).

No, there could not be a planet as large as the Sun, using the standard definition of planet (that is, not calling a stellar object a planet just because it orbits another star).

No, there could not be a star as large as our solar system. The largest stars yet observed have radii which may approach that of the orbit of Saturn, around 9-10 AU; in contrast, the radius of our solar system as a whole is more like 100,000 AU.

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Such mega-massive stars sit just beneath the Eddington limit, which is the point at which outward radiation pressure exceeds inward gravitational force. Beyond this, they could not cohere as objects — this is what happens when stars go poof.

Stars like this (St2-18, say, or UY Scuti) are extremely low-density; their masses do not scale up with their sizes in the way you might intuitively suppose. If the Sun is a solid baseball, then these guys are gas-filled hot air balloons in comparison.

They’re big puffballs of radiation, shining with extreme luminosity but barely holding together gravitationally.

Models are being refined as scientists gather and analyze more data, but we think this maximum size is somewhere near 2,000 R☉. Two thousand times the radius of the Sun is intimidating enough! But poke it with a toothpick and it bursts (so to speak).

UY Scuti has nearly 2K times the girth of the Sun, but that is still nowhere near the radius of the whole solar system.

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The radius of a planet is constrained by the fact that, the more mass you add, the more gravitational compression you get scrunching the thing down smaller, or at least preventing it from expanding into something larger. (So, more mass = bigger planet only up to a point.)

Eventually, if you add enough mass, this compression will ignite fusion and you get a star instead.

Jupiter is fairly typical in radius for a really big gas giant. We have observed some which are larger — often 1.5–2 RJ, and in rare extreme cases perhaps as large as 6 RJ. But when you get that big, it’s possible you’re looking at a brown dwarf. Gas giants don’t get a whole lot bigger than Jupiter unless they’re quite hot (i.e., in close orbit of a star). Otherwise 2RJ could mean something like twenty times Jupiter’s mass, and that’s inviting deuterium fusion.

You can have rocky planets as large as a few Earth radii. But if you doubled the mass of Earth, you would only increase its radius by around 20–30%. Here again, gravitational compression is a limiting factor.

And they call gravity the weakest force! Well, it is, but it utterly dominates at the scale of everyday objects, including suns and worlds.

How do you explain quantum physics?

 There are three simple, but important aspects.

1. What are the odds that every star in the universe (that has a planet) has that planet in the same exact orbit.

Now what about the “orbits” of electrons around a nucleus of an atom.

If I burn a Copper salt in a flame every atom will glow green.

If I burn Strontium salt in a flame every atom will glow red.

The colour is an indication of the energy of the electron’s energy jump.

How can every atom have a specific energy jump?

And how can that energy jump be identical for every atom of that type?

Quantum mechanics explains all that.

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2. The double slit experiment works with light.

It also works with electrons and protons and every other thing that we thought were “particles.”

Quantum mechanics explains all that.

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Lastly,

3. How can particles properties be correlated even at very large distances?

The animation on the left is entangled, on the right classical correlation.

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(This one may not be simple. Time for homework...)

File:Quantum entanglement vs classical correlation video.gif - Wikimedia Commons

From Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository No higher resolution available. Note: Due to technical limitations , thumbnails of high resolution GIF images such as this one will not be animated. The limit on Wikimedia Commons is width × height × number of frames ≤ 100 million.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Quantum_entanglement_vs_classical_correlation_video.gif

This video demonstrates the difference between entangled and classically correlated quantum states when the polarization of photons is considered. In the scene on the left, the source produces photon pairs in a singlet state, which is maximally entangled. In the scene on the right, the photon pairs are created in a dephased singlet state, which is mixed and only classically correlated. In both scenes, there is a source of photon pairs in the center. One photon of each pair propagates to the detection station on the left and its partner photon propagates to the detection station on the right. Each detection station consists of a polarizing beam splitter and two detection screens. The detection stations can measure the polarization of incoming photons in different linearly-polarized bases. The video comprises three parts. In the first part, the photons are measured in the H/V basis. Both entangled and classically correlated states give rise to the same measurement results (up to random fluctuations that are intrinsic to the quantum measurements). In the second part, the measurements are performed in different bases, where the difference between the two states becomes apparent. In the third part, only the probabilities of photon detections are plotted and the detection stations are rotated smoothly over the entire range of linear polarizations. Even though the probabilities for the classically correlated state vary as the rotation angle increases, the probabilities for the entangled singlet state remain constant.

Can astronomers' research on stellar physics truly contribute to advancing nuclear fusion technology?

 Probably not.

I believe the nuclear fusion power plant experts have enough data on how the actual fusion process works.

The problems are almost all with how you build some kind of containment system that can withstand the crazy amount of heat, radiation and pressure while maintaining continuous fusion reactions and while extracting that heat for generating electricity.

But building a system that doesn’t melt or erode or have dangerous oscillations or become too radioactive to maintain are the stumbling blocks here.

What’s frustrating here is that they’ve been trying to do this since about 1960 - and after 65 years of trying and eyewatering amounts of money thrown into the research - they’re STILL saying “We’ll have it perfected in 25 years…which is the precise time estimate they gave back in 1960.

But the problems they have simply don’t exist inside a star.

• Within a star, the pressure can be held with nothing more than gravity.
• The heat doesn’t have to be contained - it just radiates outwards in all directions
• The radiation also doesn’t have to be contained. Stars are radioactive as all hell.

…and when the star starts to run out of fuel - it simply explodes - often wiping out everything withing a light-year or more!

WHAT THEY’RE TRYING TO DO:

(WARNING: This is going to be an incredibly naive - and possibly outdated explanation - but it’ll give you a feel for what the problems actually are.)

Basically, the fusion reaction itself - if scaled up to a useful level and run continuously - will melt literally ANYTHING it touches - there is no possibility of a material that won’t be destroyed by it.

So you have to somehow prevent your mini-star from touching anything. (Which is also good advice for actual stars! :-)

You can do this with a powerful magnetic field - but if you can’t make a spherical (or cuboidal, or tetrahedral or shaped like a cute bunny…) magnetic field - the laws of physics don’t allow that.

You can, however, make a cylinder - with a simple coil of wire in fact.

But then the fusion reaction just blasts out of the ends of your cylinder and - you lose “containment” and that’s very, very, bad!

So what they try to do is to use very carefully placed magnetic fields to bend that cylinder into a donut shape (a “torus”) - that’s like bending a cylinder until the flat ends touch each other.

The purple stuff is the fusion reaction the dark blue and light blue things are insanely powerful electro-magnets.

…and this is what it looks like for real…

So now you have a magnetic field with no “ends”…

This seems like the perfect solution! Problem solved!

But the devil is in the details. The insanely hot, insanely high pressure plasma wants to leak out. It doesn’t stay stable - it wobbles about, forms kinks and so forth.

This means that it can (possibly briefly) touch the side of the containment vessel - and if that happens, you’re going to have a VERY bad day!

So now you need fancy computer tech to carefully futz with the magnetic field microsecond-by-microsecond to keep the plasma contained within the torus.

As computers have gotten better - and the designers have gotten smarter about predicting and preventing those kinks…they seemed to be getting better at this. But every time anyone ever asks - it’s always “We’ll be generating power within 25 years”…with literally no end in sight.

Periodically - the researchers will demand another billion dollars to build a better machine…and sometimes some government someplace will give it to them…but (as you can imagine) the patience and the money tends to wear thin when you build a new machine - and we’re still 25 years away.

But the facility doesn’t end with the torus…here is a more complete picture…

The next problem is that the energy required to keep the plasma inside the magnetic field is crazy-high…and it can be MORE than the energy the plasma itself produces.

So now you have a power plant that needs more energy to run than it generates!

There are other ways to make fusion power - like shooting lasers at a pellet containing hydrogen gas - but these don’t generate continuous power - and have numerous problems of their own. It doesn’t seem like those are THE ANSWER TO OUR PROBLEMS - because the majority of work is going into those toroidal systems - suggesting that researchers are still seeing that as the best hope.

CONCLUSION:

I think that fusion power plant researchers already know all they’ll ever need to know about what happens during the fusion process.

It’s all about containment - and that’s something that we can’t learn from stars (which, quite honestly, do an absolutely TERRIBLE job of doing that!!)

I’m not optimistic about fusion energy. I was 5 years old when they first started to work on it - and now I’m collecting my pension. I don’t think I’ll live to see a practical fusion reactor…but we have hope.

Do you believe that there will be flaws discovered in modern physics in the near future? If so, which ones and why do you think they will be found?

 I strongly believe that soon will be found that the Standard Model is a deviation from the true underlying reality. This deviation started in year 1935 by the wrong decision to include neutrons in nuclei.

James Chadwick who discovered in 1932 a neutral particle that decayed in a proton and an electron he was assessing together with Niels Bohr a model for this complex. They failed to find a different complex than a point-like electron attracted by a proton of opposite electric charge and so orbiting around it, that was the accepted Bohr’s model for hydrogen. Unfortunately the scientific community had rejected the A.L.Parson’s model proposed (in 1915) for the electron as Toroidal Ring based on Lord Kelvin’ vortex ring for the structure of mater in 1867. Such a model could support the missed opportunity for a correct neutron model (a proton in the center of an electron ring) and for an “electric charge” as the result of the vortices around the ring and not wrongly assumed as an innate property.

The scientific community decided in 1935 arbitrarily that the unstable neutron is similar with the stable proton, with zero charge and that becomes stable inside nuclei. This decision solved the difference between the mass number A and atomic number Z (A≥2Z). Later on the quarks were invented with electric charges +2/3 and –1/3 in order to explain the zero charge of neutrons and their change in the nuclei to protons and vice versa in order to explain the unstable isotopes and other experimental conflicts.

A model based on proton and electron as vortex rings supports a neutron as an unstable complex of a proton-ring of radius 10^-15 m, in the center of an extremely thin electron ring of radius 10^-10 m. Therefore nucleus is a symmetric spinning lattice of proton rings.

My model (see in my profile in Quora) is based on the hypothesis that proton and electron are kinetic energy excitations in the form of cyclonic structures similar to vortex rings inside a pressure field of Ideal Gas (as defined in Boltzmann’s (1866) classical Kinetic Theory of mass-points interacting by perfect elastic collisions).

A macroscopic example of a real pressure field is the pressure field in our Atmosphere where kinetic energy excitations of air molecules are generated in the form of cyclones with the maximum kinetic energy at the walls of their cyclonic eyes.

The Universal Dark Energy (UDE) that fulfills our 3D space and generates the accelerated expansion of our Universe, supports the hypothesis that the UDE is the kinetic energy of the mass-points of a Universal Ideal Gas (UIG) that fulfills our 3D space.

In the pressure field of the UIG many unstable cyclonic forms can be formed but only two sizes of kinetic energy- excitations in the form of vortex rings (and their anti-vortex rings) can be stable. Therefore proton and electron (and their antiparticles) are the only stable ring-shaped cyclones (with a ring-shaped cyclonic eye and an axial cyclonic eye) inside the UIG.

Electron is a ring of radius 10^-10 m with an extremely thin ring-shaped cyclonic eye and proton is of radius 10^-15 m with a thick ring-shaped cyclonic eye and a thick axial cyclonic eye (see the image here below).

The cyclonic swirls around the cyclonic eyes of electron and proton generate (according to Bernoulli principle) strong pressure gradients resulting into the Coulomb force for electron and proton and the Nuclear force for proton. And the weak diffusion flow of mass-points towards the vacuum of the cyclonic eyes generates (according to Bernoulli principle) a weak pressure gradient resulting into the Gravity force.

Neutron being a complex of a proton in the center of an electron ring cannot fit inside nuclei. A stable nucleus (with mass number A) is a symmetric spinning lattice of proton rings. A number N of cyclonic swirls of the rings that are placed with diverse orientations are negated and so the nucleus attracts only Z=A-N electron rings that are knitting a cage.

For example the 3D image of He-4 atom is shown here below. It is not 4 spherical nucleons (2protons and 2 neutrons) with quarks and gluons inside.

For example the 3D image of the outer electron rings of Ne atom is shown here below as a knitted cage (8 electron rings inscribed in the faces of two successive 4-hedra). It is not 8 orbital clouds of point-like electrons.

Nuclei with proton rings unstably oriented are unstable isotopes. Reorientation of unstable isotopes changes the Z resulting into the contraction of the electronic cage and the ejection of its outermost electron or into expansion of the electronic cage and ejection of its outermost electron that is inverted to positron, Electron capture occurs more often for heavy elements because their thick electronic cage holds its outermost electron ring as it is not sufficiently expanded by the reorientation of a proton ring.

Mysterious Holes Of Universe

 The universe is full of mysterious “holes” — but not all of them are black holes. Here’s a quick look at some fascinating cosmic phenomena:

🕳️ Black Holes: Regions of space where gravity is so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape. Born from collapsed stars, they’re the ultimate cosmic sinkholes.

🌌 Wormholes: Hypothetical tunnels connecting distant points in spacetime — the ultimate shortcuts across the universe (still theoretical, but mind-blowing!).

🕳️ White Holes: Theoretical opposites of black holes, spewing out matter and energy instead of sucking it in. No confirmed sightings yet!

🌟 Cosmic Voids: Vast, empty regions between galaxy clusters, where matter is incredibly sparse—like giant “holes” in the fabric of the cosmos.

The universe’s “holes” come in many forms, each with its own mysteries waiting to be unraveled.

4 Places Where The Laws Of Physics Break Down

 The four extreme scenarios where the known laws of physics cease to function reliably.

It is titled “4 Places Where The Laws Of Physics Break Down” in bold yellow text.

Each quadrant of the image shows a different phenomenon representing physical limits.

The top-left quadrant refers to conditions “Below the Planck Length.”

The Planck length (~1.616 x 10⁻³⁵ meters) is the smallest meaningful length scale in physics.

At this scale, quantum fluctuations of spacetime become significant.

Current physics, especially general relativity, fails to describe this regime accurately.

We lack a complete theory of quantum gravity to understand phenomena at this scale.

The top-right quadrant shows a black hole and mentions “In the centre of Black hole.”

This center is known as the singularity, where gravity becomes infinite.

General relativity predicts singularities but cannot describe what happens within them.

Quantum mechanics also fails to provide a working model at these extremes.

The bottom-left quadrant shows an explosion-like structure labeled “Before the Big Bang.”

Physics as we know it starts at the Big Bang, around 13.8 billion years ago.

Anything before that event is speculative, lacking testable theories or data.

Singularities and high-energy densities complicate predictions for this pre-Big Bang state.

The bottom-right quadrant refers to “Above Speed Of Light.”

Special relativity holds that nothing with mass can travel faster than light.

Going beyond light speed would imply imaginary mass and breakdown of causality.

Such speeds violate Einstein’s equations, leading to undefined results.

These breakdowns point to limits in current scientific understanding.

They emphasize the need for a unified theory that reconciles gravity and quantum mechanics.

These domains lie at the edge of known physics and inspire ongoing research.

Scientists aim to explore these boundaries through theory, experiments, and observation.

Despite limitations, these frontiers guide the search for new physical laws.

They mark zones where a new paradigm in physics is likely to emerge.

#science #space #astronomy #spacescience #sun #NASA #earth #explore #physics #BigBang #blackhole

ಕ್ವಾಂಟಮ್ ಭೌತಶಾಸ್ತ್ರ ಮತ್ತು ಕಣ ಭೌತಶಾಸ್ತ್ರದ ನಡುವಿನ ವ್ಯತ್ಯಾಸವೇನು?

 ಕ್ವಾಂಟಮ್ ಭೌತಶಾಸ್ತ್ರ

ಕ್ವಾಂಟಮ್ ಭೌತಶಾಸ್ತ್ರವು ಭೌತಶಾಸ್ತ್ರದ ಒಂದು ಶಾಖೆ. ಹೆಚ್ಚಿನ ಜನರಿಗೆ ಭಯ ಹುಟ್ಟಿಸುವ ಶಾಸ್ತ್ರ.

ಇದನ್ನು ಅರ್ಥ ಮಾಡಿಕೊಳ್ಳಲು ಪ್ರಾರಂಭಿಸುವುದಕ್ಕೆ ಈ ಕೆಳಗಿನ ಆರು ಸೂತ್ರಗಳನ್ನು ತಿಳಿದುಕೊಂಡರೆ ಮುಂದೆ ಸುಲಭವಾಗುತ್ತದೆ.

1. ಈ ಜಗತ್ತಿನಲ್ಲಿ ಎಲ್ಲವೂ ಅಲೆಗಳಿಂದ ಮಾಡಲ್ಪಟ್ಟಿವೆ, ಹಾಗೂ ಕಣಗಳಿಂದ.

2. ಕ್ವಾಂಟಮ್ ಭೌತಶಾಸ್ತ್ರವು ಬಿಡಿ ಬಿಡಿ ಆದದ್ದು (discrete). ಅಖಂಡವಾದದ್ದಲ್ಲ.

ಚಿತ್ರ: ಅಲೆಯ ಪ್ಯಾಕೆಟ್

3. ಇದರ ಪ್ರಯೋಗಗಳಲ್ಲಿ ಅನೇಕ ಫಲಿತಾಂಶಗಳು ಸಂಭವವಿದ್ದು ಪ್ರತಿಯೊಂದು ಫಲಿತಾಂಶದ ಸಂಭವನೀಯತೆಯನ್ನು ಲೆಕ್ಕ ಹಾಕಲಾಗುತ್ತದೆ.

4. ಕ್ವಾಂಟಮ್ ಭೌತಶಾಸ್ತ್ರವು ಒಂದು ಸ್ಥಳಕ್ಕೆ ಸೀಮಿತವಾದದ್ದಲ್ಲ. ಒಂದು ಸ್ಥಳದ ಪ್ರಯೋಗದ ಫಲಿತಾಂಶ ತುಂಬಾ ದೂರದಲ್ಲಿರುವ ವಸ್ತುವಿನ ಗುಣಗಳ ಮೇಲೂ ಅವಲಂಬಿಸಿರಬಹುದು. ಇದನ್ನು entanglement ಎನ್ನುತ್ತಾರೆ.

5. ಕ್ವಾಂಟಮ್ ಭೌತಶಾಸ್ತ್ರವು ಬಹುತೇಕ ಪರಮಾಣುಗಳು ಮತ್ತು ತಳಹದಿಯ ಕಣಗಳಿಗೆ ಸಂಬಂಧಪಟ್ಟದ್ದು.

6. ಕ್ವಾಂಟಮ್ ಭೌತಶಾಸ್ತ್ರವು ಕಣ್ಕಟ್ಟಿನ ವಿದ್ಯೆ ಅಂತೂ ಅಲ್ಲ.

ಕ್ವಾಂಟಮ್ ಭೌತಶಾಸ್ತ್ರದ ಭವಿಷ್ಯದ ಗುರಿಗಳು:

1. ಕ್ವಾಂಟಮ್ ಸಂವಹನ
2. ಕ್ವಾಂಟಮ್ ಕಂಪ್ಯೂಟರ್
3. ಕ್ವಾಂಟಮ್ ಸಿಮ್ಯುಲೇಟರ್ (ಅಣಕಗಳು)
4. ಕ್ವಾಂಟಮ್ ಮೆಟ್ರಾಲಜಿ (ಅಳತೆ ಶಾಸ್ತ್ರ)
5. ಕ್ವಾಂಟಮ್ ಹಾರ್ಡ್ವೇರ್
6. ಕ್ವಾಂಟಮ್ ಸಾಫ್ಟ್ವೇರ್

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ಪಾರ್ಟಿಕಲ್ ಭೌತಶಾಸ್ತ್ರ

ಪಾರ್ಟಿಕಲ್ ಭೌತಶಾಸ್ತ್ರವು ಭೌತಶಾಸ್ತ್ರದ ಇನ್ನೊಂದು ಶಾಖೆ. ಇದೂ ಕೂಡ ಕಠಿಣವಾದ ಶಾಸ್ತ್ರವೇ ಸರಿ. ಪಾರ್ಟಿಕಲ್ ಭೌತಶಾಸ್ತ್ರಕ್ಕೆ ಕ್ವಾಂಟಂ ಭೌತಶಾಸ್ತ್ರದ ತಳಹದಿ ಮುಖ್ಯ.

ಪ್ರತಿಯೊಂದು ವಸ್ತುವಿನ ಪರಮಾಣುಗಳಲ್ಲಿ ಎಲೆಕ್ಟ್ರಾನ್, ಪ್ರೋಟಾನ್ ಮತ್ತು ನ್ಯೂಟ್ರಾನ್ ಗಳಿವೆ. ಪ್ರೋಟಾನ್ ಮತ್ತು ನ್ಯೂಟ್ರಾನ್ ಗಳನ್ನು ಕೂಡ ಸಿಗಿದರೆ ಅವಕ್ಕಿಂತಲೂ ಸಣ್ಣ ಕಣಗಳು ಇರುವುದು ತಿಳಿಯುತ್ತದೆ. ಇವಲ್ಲದೆ ಈ ಕಣಗಳನ್ನು ಹಿಡಿದಿಡುವ ಶಕ್ತಿಗಳೂ ಇವೆ. ಪರಮಾಣುವನ್ನು ಬಗೆದಷ್ಟೂ ಹೊಸ ಹೊಸ ಸಂಗತಿಗಳು ಅರಿವಿಗೆ ಬರುತ್ತವೆ. ಸಧ್ಯಕ್ಕೆ ಪರಮಾಣುವಿನ ಮಾನದಂಡದ ಮಾದರಿ (Standard Model) ಹೀಗಿದೆ. ಇದು ಕೊಟ್ಟಕೊನೆಯ ಮಾದರಿಯೇನಲ್ಲ.

ಪಾರ್ಟಿಕಲ್ ಭೌತಶಾಸ್ತ್ರ ಈ ಮಾದರಿಯನ್ನು ಪ್ರಯೋಗಗಳ ಮೂಲಕ ಉತ್ತಮಗೊಳಿಸುತ್ತಾ ಹೋಗುವ ಶಾಸ್ತ್ರ. ಇದರಲ್ಲಿ ಕಣಗಳನ್ನು ಅತಿ ಹೆಚ್ಚಿನ ವೇಗಕ್ಕೆ ಗುರಿಪಡಿಸಿ ಸಂಶೋಧನೆ ನಡೆಸುವುದರಿಂದ ಈ ಭೌತಶಾಸ್ತ್ರಕ್ಕೆ ಹೈ ಎನರ್ಜಿ ಫಿಸಿಕ್ಸ್ ಎಂದೂ ಕರೆಯುತ್ತಾರೆ.

ಚಿತ್ರ: ಪಾರ್ಟಿಕಲ್ ಆಕ್ಸಿಲರೇಟರ್

ಚಿತ್ರ: ಹಿಗ್ಸ್ ಬೋಸಾನ್ ಕಣವನ್ನು ಪತ್ತೆ ಹಚ್ಚಿದ CERN ನ ಹೆಡ್ರಾನ್ ಕೊಲೈಡರ್

ಅಗಾಧವಾದ ವಿಶ್ವದ ಕತ್ತಲಲ್ಲಿ ತಡಕಾಡಿ ಏನಾದರೂ ಕಣಗಳು ಇವೆಯೋ ಎಂದು ಪತ್ತೆ ಹಚ್ಚುವುದೂ ಒಂದು ದೊಡ್ಡ ಕೆಲಸ. ಹೀಗೆ ಹುಡುಕುತ್ತಿದ್ದರೆ ಮುಂದೊಂದು ದಿನ ಡಾರ್ಕ್ ಮ್ಯಾಟರ್ ಮತ್ತು ಡಾರ್ಕ್ ಎನರ್ಜಿ ಬಗ್ಗೆ ಮನುಷ್ಯನಿಗೆ ಯುರೇಕಾ ಕ್ಷಣಗಳು ದಕ್ಕಲಿಕ್ಕೆ ಸಾಧ್ಯ!

ಚಿತ್ರ: ಪಾರ್ಟಿಕಲ್ ಭೌತಶಾಸ್ತ್ರದ ಭವಿಷ್ಯದ ಹಾದಿ.