Why the sun shines

[milkyrosie]

The sun is really nothing like a ton of bricks. Bricks, are usually made of clay, though they can also be made of concrete, stone, calcium citrate, or even fly ash, and according to "The Ten Commandments" they must have straw mixed into the clay by the feet of Hebrew slaves. The sun, on the other hand, is a mass of incandescent plasma, and it is

Comments

[fiddledragon]

I love you so much.

[peachkabob]

same in costa rica! it is hard to paint a mural with a ton of bricks hitting your face!

[orawnzva]

In the new version, it's a "miasma of incandescent plasma", so it still rhymes (but it doesn't scan!). I've never liked the word "built" there, either - "smashed", "blasted", maybe "smushed", but I just can't buy the orderly-sounding word "built" for a process of throwing things at each other at extreme velocities such that they have some probability of glomming together.

Is our sun massive enough to fuse helium into carbon at any stage of its life cycle? There are several forms of carbon that can be used for brick-like purposes, although any carbon so produced is unlikely to become available for brick-making until our sun explodes and a new generation of stars coalesces from the interstellar medium in this area. It is inspiring and humbling to imagine that, billions of years from now, (some of) our sun may indeed become a ton of bricks, or perhaps pencils.

[slightlymental]

ba-dum *ksh*