7 Sep
2007
7 Sep
'07
3:04 p.m.
On 9/7/07, Joshua Zucker <joshua.zucker@gmail.com> wrote:
On 9/7/07, Bill Gosper <rwmgosper@yahoo.com> wrote:
it gives off more heat than the sun provides.(!)
Well, that's probably true: a big planet like that is still slowly leaking out the heat from the potential -> kinetic energy of the gravity of its formation. Plus (at least in Jupiter, I don't know about Saturn) some heat also is/was produced by fusion of deuterium ...
It's not that of itself, it's the statement that it has an average temperature due to that: as though it would not have an average temperature if it did not generate heat! -- Mike Stay metaweta@gmail.com http://math.ucr.edu/~mike