arthur eddington was the clever fella that figured out the sun is a fusion reactor. he had good timing, especially when you take into consideration he played the role of einstein’s bulldog for the mass-energy equivalence hustle:
“It was fortunate that just prior to Eddington’s address
his Cambridge University colleague Francis Aston had
measured the masses of hydrogen and helium to be
1.008 and 4, respectively. Eddington argued that the
Sun is being powered by converting hydrogen to helium
– by combining four hydrogen nuclei (protons) with
two electrons and releasing energy in the process. The
exact details were wrong of course – the process is more
complicated and involves deuterium, positrons and
neutrinos, for example – but the basic idea was correct:
the Sun is indeed converting hydrogen to helium”
As he told his audience in
Cardiff, “we sometimes dream that man will one day
learn how to release it and use it for his service”
this prescientist also figured out that there are a shit-ton of protons in the “observable universe”. i’m sure a nasa satellite will one day verify his genius.
arthur eddington was the clever fella that figured out the sun is a fusion reactor. he had good timing, especially when you take into consideration he played the role of einstein’s bulldog for the mass-energy equivalence hustle:
“It was fortunate that just prior to Eddington’s address
his Cambridge University colleague Francis Aston had
measured the masses of hydrogen and helium to be
1.008 and 4, respectively. Eddington argued that the
Sun is being powered by converting hydrogen to helium
– by combining four hydrogen nuclei (protons) with
two electrons and releasing energy in the process. The
exact details were wrong of course – the process is more
complicated and involves deuterium, positrons and
neutrinos, for example – but the basic idea was correct:
the Sun is indeed converting hydrogen to helium”
As he told his audience in
Cardiff, “we sometimes dream that man will one day
learn how to release it and use it for his service”
www.iter.org/doc/www/content/c…
this prescientist also figured out that there are a shit-ton of protons in the “observable universe”. i’m sure a nasa satellite will one day verify his genius.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddingto…
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_E…