[AR] Re: Freeman Dyson, RIP

  • From: "Jake Anderson" <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> (Redacted sender "jake" for DMARC)
  • To: arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, Henry Spencer <hspencer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Wed, 11 Mar 2020 10:49:59 +1100

On 11/3/20 5:44 am, Henry Spencer wrote:

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

Clearly we need to build a very serious probe. Perhaps with some ice and go out and measure it ;-)


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