It’s the sun, it’s literally a burning ball of gas providing energy to countless things millions of kilometers away… How can humans make something that is hotter than that? And how is lightning hotter than the sun?
Edit: just to clarify how is it TECHNOLOGICALLY possible? Like what do you have to do to make something hotter than the sun?
In: Physics
It may help to remember that although the *total* energy emitted by the sun is tremendous, the energy emitted *relative to its size* is not all that large. A fire here on Earth is only a little bit cooler than the Sun’s surface, and fires are pretty bright. If you imagine the whole Earth on fire, you can imagine that would be *really* bright, and that’s more or less why the sun’s really bright. (To be clear, the sun isn’t on fire; the heat comes from an entirely different reaction. But the idea – that it’s only moderately bright per area but that there’s a ton of area – is what’s important here.)
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