why doesn't the sun burn out?

Answer 1

It will eventually, about 8 billion years from now.

Answer 2

The Sun will last about 5 billion years as it is now, a so called Main Sequence Star, and burns 700 billion tonnes a second. This may look like a lot but the Sun actually burns Hydrogen, a gas, and it turns it into Helium, another gas. This happens in the central part of the Sun, its Core, through a process called nuclear fusion. A side effect of fusion is that light and heat are created. So only a small amount of this Hydrogen, only a few Billion tonnes a second, is actually burned off to create light. I would not worry that so much Hydrogen is burnt every second as the sun has a mass of 1.989 times 1030Kg. That is 1,989,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Kg, or one million nine thousand, eight hundred and nine billion, billion, billion Kg. So the odd few Billion tonnes will not be missed.

What is really interesting is what happens after the Hydrogen has been used up in the Suns core. At this point in our Sun's life the central part of the Sun, its core, shrinks and heats up and its atmosphere will expand to cover the Earth, and possibly Mars. The Sun is now called a Red Giant Star. If you can find the constellation Orion, the bright red star in the upper left hand corner is a Red Giant called Betelgeuse. After only a few million years the core will shrink again and the our Suns atmosphere will be blown off into space to become Planetary Nebulae. What will be left is a type of Star called a White Dwarf. This will last for many tens of billions of years, slowly cooling and getting dimmer. So, our star, the Sun, will last for 5 Billion years as it is, a few million years as a Red Giant, and finally tens of Billions of Years as a White Dwarf.

Answer 3

The Answer
The Sun is basically a thermonuclear bomb with a built-in thermostat. Just as in a hydrogen bomb, hydrogen atoms are fusing together to make helium atoms and this nuclear reaction produces heat (along with the light that we see). If the reactions go on too fast, the Sun expands slightly (just like a balloon expands when you heat up the air in it). This slows down the reactions and then the Sun cools and contracts. If it contracts too much, the nuclear reactions speed up, and then the Sun heats up and expands again. So the Sun stays at the same temperature, burning its nuclear fuel at a steady rate. At the rate it is going, we have about 4 billion years left until the Sun burns out

Answer 4

Only a fuel + oxygen can burn. This is not happening.
The general believe is, that hydrogene in the inner of the sun fuses to helium. It is a thermo nuclear reaction. According Einstein's E = mc2 a little bit of loss of mass gives an enornous amount of heat and radiation.
However there is a lot of hydrogene, 'one day' everything is gone, the process stops after many millions of years and the sun cools down.
(The process is more complicated!)

Answer 5

The sun is a star. The easier answer is that It is made to last approximately 5 billion years. There's enough hydrogen on it to keep us warm for at least the next 50,000 years.

When the time comes, it will burn out. But by then, mankind will probably be non existant.

Kudos to glass m, he knows how to plagiarize. :)

Answer 6

The Earth's sun is actually node fed from the Big Bang point.The Big Bang point is at the cusp of nothing and something,where particles of nothing turn in to photons.In all there is--that is all there is--is nothing and pi. The substrate or domain of nothing has no beginning with regards to time.Particles of nothing are truly made out of nothing-- they are pi-less curves that exist because of homogeneously ever plummeting temperatures.Zero degrees Kelvin is warm and balmy compared to the temperature of nothing.We are surrounded by the substrate of nothing--it is at a temperature gradient relative to us.All suns are at the Cartesian junction where the distance between two points is always zero.The sun would never burn out.There could never be anything that could disrupt the particle flow from nothing--where the temperatures are homogeneously ever plummeting.

Answer 7

The sun only has enough gas to last another 5 billion years, but it will run out of nuclear fusion.

Answer 8

It will, but it won't happen quite soon.

Remember, the Sun is quite big, so it cant just burn out ike a piece of paper...

Answer 9

it's busy doing that as we speak but it will not happen for millions of years due to it's size, so it has lots of fuel to burn but it is finite so it will eventually burn out

Answer 10

THE SUN WILL BURN OUT WHEN IT QUITS HAVEING ATOMS SMASHING INTO EACH OTHER AND MAKING HEAT AND LIGHT FRICTION AND THEN IN BILLIONS OF YEARS THAT WILL QUIT AND THEN THE SUN WILL EITHER GROW HUGE AND BURN ALL OF THE PLANETS AND THEN SINCE ITS SO BIG IT WILL CLAPS ON ITSELF AND THEN IT WILL KEEP LIKE SPINNING AND STUFF AND IT WILL BE SO TIGHTLY PACKED THEN IT WILL CREATE A BLACK HOLE