(January 20, 2015 at 5:12 am)Heywood Wrote:(January 20, 2015 at 4:46 am)Stimbo Wrote: How is this radiation produced?
Ions give up some of their energy as light as the body moves toward thermodynamic equilibrium.
I know where you are going, but the point I am trying to make is there is a lot of stuff happening the system we call a star. It is simply inaccurate to call a star a thermonuclear reaction when there is a whole lot of other stuff going on too. Chas is conflating one process that happens within a star with the star itself. Don't make the same error he is making.
A star is a thermonuclear reactor. It takes protons and makes helium nuclei through a series of nuclear processes. Like any nuclear reactor, it also makes other stuff as well like light, neutrinos, neutrons, lithium, etc. Other stuff the sun does (like be a huge gravitational well) doesn't mean it stops being a thermonuclear reactor.
