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Official ask RedCream Questions Thread No.2

Name: Anonymous 2012-03-04 7:27

Are you excited for the 2nd installment of the hippest thread on /lounge/?

Name: RedCream 2012-03-21 23:36

>>211
What would happen when a sun made of ice and a sun made of lava collide?
Yes, this is a favorite troll poasting on /sci/, but I have handled this sufficiently in those pages. Let us begin that epic re-telling.

Basically, the "sun of ice" pretty much means a solar mass (about 10^30 kg) of water ice in one place as a volumetric continuum. Such a mass has no stability and could never occur, since such a continuous mass even near absolute zero (the temperature of the water ice being unspecified) must gravitationally collapse, stripping the Hydrogen atoms from the Oxygen atoms in each water molecule, and then in the core of the collapsing mass, the electrons would be stripped from those atoms, forming a plasma, albeit under extraordinary density.

This sort of collapse into stellar formation would be essentially unprecedented in our universe. But even if it were setup to occur, the collapse would obviate the "sun of ice" categorization. It would just be a sun, with highly unusual starting processes... after all, the star's composition would be only 11% Hydrogen at first, with 89% Oxygen. Stellar formation is usually heavily sourced from Hydrogen and Helium, the universe's basic building blocks, atomically speaking. I have no doubt the core would start fusing, but the overwhelming presence of such heavy nuclei like Oxygen would compress the fusion lifespan, perhaps even producing a nova-like explosion within seconds of a fusion start. I do not know precisely, having not run the numbers.

The point here is that "sun of ice" is just impossible. Even if started as ice, even near absolute zero, it would gravitationally collapse and cease being water ice within seconds of its unfathomable formation.

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