radiation pressure is P r = σT 4/3. Phillips shows that the critical value for the Sun’s core today is 1.5 milliwatts per kg, whereas the estimated actual power generated is a bit less, 1.35 milliwatts per kg. So, if the actual power generated were increased by more than 11%, the core would become convective. Thus, my proposal is that during the flood the luminosity of the Sun increased by at least 11%. Later I will offer a reason to think that its luminosity gradually decreased during the Ice Age back down to today’s level. Convection in the core would send bubbles of hotter gas up into the radiation zone. They would penetrate a short distance, then slow down and break up. That would heat up the penetrated region. Because the bubble temperatures would be adiabatic as they rise, the temperature gradient in the newly heated region would steepen to about the adiabatic gradient. The steeper gradient would allow the following bubbles to rise further into the zone and heat up a higher region, making its temperature gradient steepen to the adiabatic slope also, as Fig. 6 shows. In this way, the pulse of heat in the solar core during the year of the flood would travel rapidly (at convective speeds, km/s) to the surface and make the Sun fully convective. That is, l in Fig. 4, the thickness of the convection zone, would become about 3.5 times larger, extending all the way from the center to the surface. Then heat could travel rapidly from the core to the surface in a matter of days. DIFFERENTIAL ROTATION IN THE SUN The Sun rotates faster at its equator than at higher latitudes (Howe 2009). The observed difference in angular velocity from pole to equator, ΔΩ, is 3.0 degrees per earth day. The rotation period at medium latitude is about 27 days. In one year, the equator rotates 14.6 times, while the poles rotate only 11.6 times (Allen 1976, p. 180). So, every year, the equator rotates three more times than the poles. This differential rotation is very important to the Sun’s magnetic cycle, but how it happens is not well understood. It seems to result from turbulence in the convection, from eddies that add to the eastward flow of gas more near the equator than near the poles. Kitchatinov (2005, p. 462, eq. 48) calculates that ΔΩ depends on the characteristic size, δ, and the root-mean-square average velocity, v, of the turbulent eddies: Apparently because turbulent fluid flows are still mostly a mystery, Kitchatinov gives no way to calculate v/δ from first principles, which leaves us not knowing how that ratio would have changed when the Sun went fully convective. If conservation of angular momentum is involved, the larger value of l could mean that v was larger. But δ may have increased also. I am assuming that the differential rotation was either about the same as now, or somewhat faster. INCREASE IN MAGNETIC ACTIVITY OF THE SUN Fig. 7 shows how the differential rotation affects the Sun’s magnetic field, according to a well-known theory by Babcock (1961), supported by spectroscopic observations of the magnetic field in the gas at the surface. The observations show that the Sun reverses the polarity Figure 6. Wave of convection rising through the diffusive radiation zone. Figure 7. Differential rotation twists the Sun’s magnetic lines of force, wrapping them around it like twine. (6) HUMPHREYS Cause of large post-Flood jump in 14C 2023 ICC 283
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