[AR] Re: Freeman Dyson, RIP

  • From: Henry Spencer <hspencer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: Arocket List <arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Tue, 10 Mar 2020 14:44:27 -0400 (EDT)

On Tue, 10 Mar 2020, ken mason wrote:

      The time scale for energy propagation out is long, thousands of
      years if I recall correctly...

I've always heard/read that it takes millions of years for core energy to
'wiggle' its way to the surface.

Checking around a bit, there are a wide range of numbers quoted for this. Simplistic calculations say it's *at least* thousands of years, but the assumptions you make can add two or perhaps three more zeros to that. It's not a number that interests the astrophysicists very much, so nobody with detailed knowledge seems to have made a serious attempt to calculate an authoritative number, and there is no obvious way to measure it within one NSF funding cycle. :-)

Henry

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