Strange solar question.

[Traab]

Did a quick search and had a hard time finding specifics, so maybe an expert can help. This is a superman based question. I was wondering, would going into the suns core actually power superman up? If he is powered by the light of a yellow sun, wouldnt the stuff at its center be different enough to not be fuel for him? Different radiation, different level of light, etc etc etc? Basically, is the energy being produced at the core of the sun, fundamentally the same as that being radiated out from its corona? Or would going into the core basically end up with him cut off from his fuel source as he is hammered by endless fusion explosions under absurd levels of pressure? Heck, it could be both for all I know, he is getting a higher dose of solar power, but also being drained by the crushing pressure and explosions.

[Bucky]

Here are some effects of being in the solar core:

Black-body radiation - the light that comes from being hot - is based only on temperature and on the amount of surface area.

Being inside the sun means Superman's getting light from all sides rather than just one direction. The surface area here is all his exposed skin; this is somewhat higher than it'd be outside the sun.

Increasing the temperature increases the amount of light of every color. Hotter means more yellow light, even if it also means a larger fraction of the light is another color.

So yes, whatever light Superman would get from being near the sun, he gets exposed to more of it from being inside the sun. He also gets exposed to a lot of other stuff, whose effects I can't really speculate about.

[Anymage]

Not a big comics fan in general so I'm not an authoritative source, but I vaguely remember seeing one free comic book thing where ODing on solar radiation meant that he'd eventually burn out. Just like the positive energy plane in D&D can provide too much of a good thing, excessive amounts of yellow sun might turn into too much.

As for how much power he'd be able to draw, do they ever explain why a yellow star specifically does this and not a laboratory produced light with similar wavelengths and spectral signatures? Again, not the biggest comics fan here. I'd have to know the specific power mechanism in order to say anything useful.

[factotum]

I'd go with Bucky's answer, to be honest--there will be more light at every wavelength in the core of the Sun as there is at its surface. Even Superman is probably going to get vapourised by 100 million degree temperatures, though.

[Bucky]

Bonus round! There are a couple of light sources other than black-body radiation that also matter. On the order of approximately-most to approximately-least:

Light given off by ions gathering free electrons, or rearranging their electrons after losing one, is concentrated in specific colors, the various elements' emissions spectra. These colors correspond to the difference between a high-energy arrangement and a low energy arrangement (per photon).

Hydrogen fusion produces positrons; most of these annihilate with electrons, resulting in a specific color of gamma radiation.

Electric currents within the core, or maybe even convection currents of hot plasma, likely* interact with the sun's massive magnetic field to produce X-rays.

Various nuclear reactions related to fusion have their own ranges of gamma-ray frequencies. Which of these are prominent depends on where one is in the core. But the amount of light from these gamma rays is actually pretty small compared to the other light sources.

*Theoretically predicted, but not directly observed

[aspi]

[...] wouldnt the stuff at its center be different enough to not be fuel for him?
That is ultimately the core of your question that makes any attempt at an answer futile. How different is different enough to not be fuel in the case of Superman? Unless you can define this formally, there's really no point in arguing about the differences between the sun's core and surface.

That said, if the requirement is indeed yellow light then it is worth noting that only the outside of our sun emits what we perceive as yellow light. The inside is much hotter and the light is not in the visible spectrum. The photons that are generated in the fusion process in the core are invisible gamma rays that gradually change frequency (and are "split" into multiple lower energy rays) as they are absorbed and emitted again and again during their tens of thousands of years long journey to the surface.

[Khedrac]

it is worth noting that only the outside of our sun emits what we perceive as yellow light.

Except that's not really true either - our sun emits white light, but the atmosphere scatters the blue out of it making the sun look yellow and the sky look blue... (Yes, our sun is a yellow dwarf, but things are never simple).

[Traab]

I think for me the problem comes in when you include the fact that light from different stars has different effects. Red neutralizes his powers, blue magnifies them tremendously, etc etc etc. Therefore the type of light and energy seems to be fairly specific. So you would think even a fairly minor deviation could alter the effect on his body. In fact, having looked that up I see the color of the sun depends in large part on its level of heat. A red sun would be on the cool end of the spectrum for a star, while blue is really really hot. Which may explain why sun dipping is used to supercharge him as it becomes much much hotter, and thus further up the color spectrum, than the surface. But that would suggest that it has nothing to do with solar radiation, as from the brief overview I read, these different color stars are all made of the same stuff, its just a matter of mass and heat produced and everything to do with the temperature the sun radiates, meaning he is thermal powered, not solar, which introduces tons of logical inconsistencies which ARRRGH! :smallbiggrin:

[Andor13]

It's comic book physics. It's never worth your time to analyze them.

Consider this: For really big boss fights, Superman apparently uses this trick of swirling his hand at relativistic speeds to increase it's mass to Black Hole levels before punching people. Observers in the comic observe that this hits with the force of several super novae. Two immediate problems present themselves however.
1st) If Supes is solar powered how is he punching with more energy than the Sun will produce in it's entire lifetime?
2nd) How exactly is he making that kinetic energy stay kinetic? No physical process is 100% efficient (2nd law of thermodynamics) and even a 1% inefficiency will release enough heat to vaporize most of the Solar System.

[Traab]

It's comic book physics. It's never worth your time to analyze them.

Consider this: For really big boss fights, Superman apparently uses this trick of swirling his hand at relativistic speeds to increase it's mass to Black Hole levels before punching people. Observers in the comic observe that this hits with the force of several super novae. Two immediate problems present themselves however.
1st) If Supes is solar powered how is he punching with more energy than the Sun will produce in it's entire lifetime?
2nd) How exactly is he making that kinetic energy stay kinetic? No physical process is 100% efficient (2nd law of thermodynamics) and even a 1% inefficiency will release enough heat to vaporize most of the Solar System.

Well CLEARLY his absorption of solar energy passes through a biological magnifying lens of sorts. So much like how the same suns rays warming the sidewalk can be turned into an ant igniting death ray, he turns the power of the sun into a tightly focused and magnified power source. /nods seriously And, if he DOES absorb thermal energy its entirely possible that the "leakage" from his black hole punches gets reabsorbed into his system rather than radiating outwards destroying everything within at least 1 au. There, a totally scientific explanation with absolutely no holes in it whatsoever. None. At all.

[tomandtish]

Not a big comics fan in general so I'm not an authoritative source, but I vaguely remember seeing one free comic book thing where ODing on solar radiation meant that he'd eventually burn out. Just like the positive energy plane in D&D can provide too much of a good thing, excessive amounts of yellow sun might turn into too much.

As for how much power he'd be able to draw, do they ever explain why a yellow star specifically does this and not a laboratory produced light with similar wavelengths and spectral signatures? Again, not the biggest comics fan here. I'd have to know the specific power mechanism in order to say anything useful.

Asked and answered in All-Star Superman (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All-Star_Superman). Basically, he gets too massive a dose, and

Will eventually become a "solar consciousness" living inside the sun.

[Jay R]

The question is based on the idea that the way Superman's powers worked has been constant for over 80 years. It's just not so.

In the Golden Age (30s to early 1950s), yellow sunlight had no effect - it was all superior development of Kryptonians and Earth's lesser gravity.

In the Silver Age they added yellow sunlight as an effect to help explain X-ray vision, heat vision, and other powers not explainable as a gravity effect. But at that time, being in the sun had no extra effect. He was fully powered if he was in a system with a yellow sun (or, really, as long as he was not in a system with a red sun). He occasionally would fly through the sun just to clean his suit.

After the 1986 reboot, he would sometimes lose his powers even on Earth, by using up his solar power reserves. There were stories in which he used the yellow sun's rays to become healed or restored to power

In the DC One Million storyline (1998), Superman had retreated to the sun and came out centuries later with much greater powers.

[factotum]

In the Golden Age (30s to early 1950s), yellow sunlight had no effect - it was all superior development of Kryptonians and Earth's lesser gravity.


I'm pretty sure that's how it worked in the original movie, too--leastways, I'm sure I remember Marlon Brando talking about gravity as being a reason his son would be super-strong on Earth.

[Jay R]

I'm pretty sure that's how it worked in the original movie, too--leastways, I'm sure I remember Marlon Brando talking about gravity as being a reason his son would be super-strong on Earth.

Just to bring up a small bit of near-forgotten lore:

That's what Marlon Brando said in the first Christopher Reeve movie.

The actual first Superman film was Superman and the Mole-Men (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0044091/goofs?ref_=ttqu_ql_2), released in 1950.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

Well CLEARLY his absorption of solar energy passes through a biological magnifying lens of sorts. So much like how the same suns rays warming the sidewalk can be turned into an ant igniting death ray, he turns the power of the sun into a tightly focused and magnified power source. /nods seriously And, if he DOES absorb thermal energy its entirely possible that the "leakage" from his black hole punches gets reabsorbed into his system rather than radiating outwards destroying everything within at least 1 au. There, a totally scientific explanation with absolutely no holes in it whatsoever. None. At all.

Because a lens is obviously an infinite energy machine which can not just focus more of the suns energy on a single spot but can actually increase create energy that wasn't there to begin with. I mean, that's just basic scientific sense.

[aspi]

Except that's not really true either - our sun emits white light, but the atmosphere scatters the blue out of it making the sun look yellow and the sky look blue... (Yes, our sun is a yellow dwarf, but things are never simple).
Sorry, but... SIGH :smallsigh:

Since you apparently want to be nitpicky: That's why I specifically said "what we perceive as yellow light". I am well aware that the sun emits a spectrum that, when combined, is white light with a large fraction in the visible spectrum. Therefore, it does contain a fraction of yellow light. In the core, however, the energy levels are much higher and there will be close to no yellow light. This argument was specifically about there not being yellow light in the core.

[Bucky]

In the core, however, the energy levels are much higher and there will be close to no yellow light.

In which case, see my first response. The core has a lot of yellow light, in addition to the higher energy levels' emissions.

[brian 333]

Our sun looks yellow to us because its predominantly green light is filtered through blue water vapor in the agmosphere. Plants are green because they were designed/evolved with natural sunscreen that reflects green light, allowing them to make use of the weaker red and blue radiation. Our eyes are far too weak to directly observe the sun, so we see glare in all three wavelengths our eyes can see, which to us looks white.

There is a theory about the reason chlorophyll is green which has to do with archaic life absorbing green, which left the outside wavelengths available to be exploited by the newly evolved green-reflecting plants.

[Kato]

Our sun looks yellow to us because its predominantly green light is filtered through blue water vapor in the agmosphere.

That's... Not how light works. Unless you're phrasing your point very poorly.
You can't put green light through a blue filter and get yellow light. But since water vapor predominantly affects blue, it also affects a large part of the similar in frequency green spectrum, which leaves yellow as the most dominant color.

The point about chlorophyll not using green light because of some ancient competitor is intriguing, though. I've always wondered why that is. (to me it seems most efficiently it would be black but that might be an evolutionary / chemical challenge)

[hamishspence]

It's technically true that the Sun peaks in blue-green:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2008/07/29/why-are-there-no-green-stars/

but, even if you were in space, and had a filter that filters all colours evenly, you wouldn't see blue-green - because that's not how our eyes work.

[Traab]

Because a lens is obviously an infinite energy machine which can not just focus more of the suns energy on a single spot but can actually increase create energy that wasn't there to begin with. I mean, that's just basic scientific sense.

Im glad you agree. Its so tiresome to argue with people who wont accept reality.