In case you didn't notice Xenon isn't Hydrogen and Helium.
I'm well aware of that. But brantc said that
plasmas only emitted spectral lines, not broad spectra, and that claim is clearly wrong. But you couldn't figure that out, so you challenged me. And when I disproved you, you fall back on this weak excuse.
But while we're talking about hydrogen and helium, why would you think that xenon plasma can emit as a blackbody but hydrogen and helium can't? They may not have the same optical depths, but what's so special about xenon that makes it do what you claim these other elements cannot do? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.
It may emit across a "broad" spectrum, but where is your evidence it acts like a perfect "black body" (emits all wavelengths) at any temperature?
Once again, you demonstrate that you've got no clue about optical depth.
Xenon has *MANY* more valence shell configurations than hydrogen and helium.
Which would give it more emission lines. But if a plasma can only emit at emission lines, and not across a broad spectra, that still can't account for xenon's light output. Which means that there must be other mechanisms not dependent upon the electron orbitals that operate in a plasma. And these mechanisms should be generic. What are some candidate mechanisms? Oh yeah: how about
free electrons?
You're also ignoring that fact that while it may have a "broader" spectrum due to it's greater number of valence shell configurations, it is not a "black body" emission.
It will be if the source is large enough. Again, optical depth. A concept you apparently have no clue about.
The "optical depth" argument is pointless unless you have empirical support of this idea
Not so. You'd know why it's relevant if you understood what it meant. But you clearly don't. LSo let me try to explain it to you: emissivity is equal to absorptivity. If a substance has any emissivity at a frequency, it's also got absorptivity at that frequency. So some of the light incident upon it will get absorbed. If you make that substance thick enough, then basically all of the light incident upon it will be absorbed. Kind of like sunglasses: stack enough of them on top of each other, and you can't see through anymore. The optical depth is a method of measuring how thick it needs to be to absorb most of the light. For xenon plasma in an arc lamp, that's something on the order of centimeters. Hold a CD up to a bright light sometime, and you'll find out that there's a nonzero optical depth even for solid metal. Now, what happens to the emissivity if we've made our substance thick enough to have an absorptivity close to 1? Well, obviously the emissivity is close to 1 as well. What does that mean?
It's basically a blackbody!
There is no "optical depth" process that is immediately going to block all wavelengths of light in first meter of the photosphere.
Well, duh. We know that. We can even
measure the optical depth. And it's not even constant for different wavelength.
As it relates to the discharge process, Bruce and Alfven already quantified these numbers in great detail.
I don't believe you, because I don't believe that either of them ever constructed a model of the sun which had a solid surface. But go on, disprove me. Link to where they quantified the properties of your model. Then we can compare my numbers to their numbers, and try to figure out who is right.
Edit: I see you added tungsten to your point about xenon arc lamps. Which just shows you haven't been paying attention. The tungsten is only for the electrodes. But the electrodes aren't the source of the light in a xenon arc lamp, the plasma is.