Tuesday, September 22, 2015

How does the sun continuously burn?

The sun isn't burning. What we are familiar with is fire or burnings caused due to oil, coal and oxygen.

The sun or rather any other star is a ball of hydrogen atoms colliding with each other. 

The gravitational pull is so strong that hydrogen atoms collide with each other such that the nucleus of the hydrogen atoms fuse into each other. This process is called as nuclear fusion


In its core the sun fuses 620 million metric tons of hydrogen atoms every second
The hydrogen atoms fuse to give out energy and form a helium atom.

Eventually hydrogen atoms fuse to form helium atoms, helium atoms to carbon, carbon atoms to oxygen, oxygen atoms to silicon, silicon atoms to iron. Iron atoms are too bulky and when they are forced to fuse an explosion occurs, this leads to a chain reaction and that would end up in the dead of a star. 
Please note the atoms are forced to fuse into each other due to the enormous gravitational force at the centre of the core.

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