• Question: How much liquid nitrogen would it take to freeze the whole sun?

    Asked by paul and james to Ciarán on 17 Nov 2014.
    • Photo: Ciarán O'Brien

      Ciarán O'Brien answered on 17 Nov 2014:

      More than we could ever produce!

      I have a friend who did his PhD in chemistry back in Galway. One day he let us play with the liquid nitrogen. One cool (ha!) trick he showed us was when he poured liquid nitrogen into a cup of warm water. Once the bubbling and fog stopped he drank the water! It was a little cooler, but didn’t actually freeze! It’s because the liquid nitrogen needed so little energy to boil away that it didn’t have to take much heat from the water to do it.

      To freeze the sun you’d have to find a way to stop the nuclear fusion reaction going on in its core. I don’t think even a planet-sized bucket of liquid nitrogen will do the trick 🙂

Comments