(ORDO NEWS) — Looking at pictures or videos showing the Sun, it seems that we have a giant fireball in front of us.
However, there is no fire there and cannot be, because fire (combustion reaction) needs oxygen, which is critically scarce in its pure form on the Sun (about 900 oxygen atoms per one million hydrogen atoms).
The sun is a giant hydrogen bomb that keeps exploding
Due to the gigantic temperatures in the core (about 15.7 million degrees Celsius) and the phenomenal gravity of the Sun, hydrogen atoms collide with such incredible force that they turn into helium atoms (proton-proton cycle).
Because two hydrogen atoms weigh slightly more than one helium atom, a small amount of mass is “lost” and converted into energy. This energy is then released as heat and light.
The sun consumes about five million tons of hydrogen every second, producing a truly enormous amount of energy and a little less than five million tons of helium.
The mass of the Sun is approximately 2,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 tons, of which 75% is hydrogen and 25% is helium, which it has already produced.
Thus, even though our star has used up a quarter of its fuel supply, it will continue to burn just as steadily for another 5-7 billion years.
When the hydrogen reserves run out, the thermonuclear reactions will stop and the Sun will begin to evolve into a red giant, increasing in size and shedding its gas shell.
The red giant phase, which will most likely destroy all the terrestrial planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars), will last about one billion years.
The discarded gas shells will turn into a colorful planetary nebula, and the Sun will be left with a white dwarf – a tiny cooling core. How long will the white dwarf phase last?
It is not known, since astronomers have never witnessed the next stage of stellar evolution.
Some models indicate that white dwarfs can cool for trillions of years, which is incomparably longer than the age of the universe.
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