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Originally Posted by rtomes
Am I right in understanding that the Kelvin-Helmhotz time is the time that gravitational energy would make the Sun shine?
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It would be more correct to say that it is the time it could make the Sun shine without dramatically changing its size and attributes. The Sun could shine for much longer on its way to becoming a cooling white dwarf.
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The fact that this is about 10 million years does seem to explain the 10 million year period that I saw. I guess either that explanation was not good or I got mixed up.
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I think sometimes the distinction is not made clearly enough.
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Anyway that does seem to narrow the answer down a lot and indicate that the 10,000 year time frame was simply based on too long a mean free path in the model and that 170,000 years is the correct vicinity.
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Yes, I think that is the right conclusion here.