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### Highest temperature possible to achieve using magnifying glass and sunlight [duplicate]

Temperature of the surface of the sun is about 5750K. Can you heat an object to more than 6000K using magnifying glass and sunlight? According to second law heat cannot be transferred from colder to ...
16k views

### Is it possible to start fire using moonlight?

You can start fire by focusing the sunlight using the magnifying glass. I searched the web whether you can do the same using moonlight. And found this and this - the first two in Google search ...
720 views

### Can solar furnace achieve higher temperature than sun surface? [duplicate]

Can solar furnace achieve higher temperature than sun surface? I guess not, but I'm not sure about that. Can you check my reasoning: -------- My reasoning ----------- Consider Sun as a black body ...
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### Is Randall Munroe's “what-if” xkcd correct that magnified moonlight can't get things hotter than the moon? [duplicate]

Note: I am NOT asking if moonlight can be used to start a fire. I am asking whether these particular arguments in support of the claim that it cannot are correct. i.e. I'm looking for an answer that ...
705 views

### Second Law of Thermodynamics…confusion over an example

By the second law of thermodynamics, you shouldn't be able to use any amount of mirrors/lenses to focus sunlight onto an object and heat it past the surface temperature of the sun (approximately 5800K)...
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### Conservation of energy when focusing black body radiation on another black body

This question about whether or not it is possible to focus black-body radiation to make something hotter than the radiation's source was answered mostly negative: the second law of thermodynamics and/...
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### Temperature increase from focusing light using a lens. (Equations required)

Could someone please quote and explain the Equations required that I would need to calculate the temperature increase of an object with a lens focussing the light from a celestial body. Therefore ...
917 views

### Can you use sun light to heat an objects surface to hotter than the surface of the Sun? [closed]

I was reading this question: Concentrating Sunlight to initiate fusion reaction and some of the comments, as well as an answer, suggest that thermodynamics second law prevents what I ask in the title. ...
101 views

### Laser beam focus

Why isn't it possible to focus a laser beam to an infinitely small point in space? I am familiar with the shape of a gaussian beam, but why can't my $w_0$ be equal to zero?
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### Solar Power Fusion

Would it be possible through a clever arrangement of solar dishes, lenses and mirrors etc, to create fusion at the focal point? Imagine you arrange your solar dishes, lenses and mirrors in such a way,...
This came out of a discussion I started yesterday and a related discussion I found. I'll recap the problem quickly: Consider two blackbodies, with surface areas $A_1$ and $A_2$ and temperatures $T_1$ ...