this post was submitted on 03 Sep 2024
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Science Memes

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[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Yes, if you consider just a human-mass equivalent portion of the Sun then it's not doing much, but that's not really a useful comparison. We're talking about total net entropy here, not entropy per unit mass.

But yes, if it makes you feel any better, I'll concede that if you had octillions of people our total metabolic energy output would, in fact, be significantly higher than that of the Sun.

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago

This raises the question of how many kg of human mass is required to start fusion and create a human star? How does fusion even work if you have a mix of different elements? Would the human star pulse in a cycle of collapsing until hydrogen fusion starts, exploding out until it stops and then collapsing again? Or would any fusion ignite enough to stop it from collapsing into a neutron star or black hole?

And if I've asked this question, does it mean xkcd has already attempted an answer? Or at least a comic that mentions it?