How much mass does the Sun convert to energy each hour?

Answer 1

Those values are incorrect.

A simple way to calculate the mass to energy conversion is to take the luminosity of the sun (Energy output/second) and divide it by the speed of light squared: just as E=mc^2, m=E/c^2

The luminosity of the sun is ~3.8x10^26 Joules/sec. c=3.0x10^8 m/s, so the sun converts ~4.2x10^9 kg of mass into energy each second, or 4.2 million metric tons. Multiply by 3600 seconds in an hour to find 15 billion tons/hour (1.5x10^10 kg).

H to He fusion converts a about 0.7% of the rest mass into photons (and an even smaller fraction into neutrinos) so multiply those numbers by 1/.007 to get the number of tons of hydrogen converted to helium.

Answer 2

Approximately 500- to 600-million tons per SECOND! That's about 1.8^12 tons per hour.