in what part of the suns interior do nuclear reactions occur?

Answer 1

The core. It gets very hot in there, about 13,600 degrees Kelvin. The surface (photosphere is a mere 5000 degrees Kelvin by comparison.

The process is nuclear fusion. This produces elements of a higher atomic number and mass than the raw material. Nuclear fission also occurs in nature. This produces elements of a lower atomic number and mass than the raw material. Fusion = to join together, Fission = to split apart.

Answer 2

Only the central part of the sun is at a high enough temperature to actually undergo nuclear reactions. You would need to use a detailed model of the sun's structure to figure out exactly how much of the sun is at a high enough temperature. If we're just estimating things we can say that on the order of 10% of the sun's mass is in the central part of the sun where it is hot enough to undergo nuclear reactions.

This information is important, by the way, because this is how we can calculate the expected life of the sun:

E = 0.007 x 0.1 x Msun c2

where Msun is the total mass of the sun, 2 x 1030 kilograms. We therefore can calculate that the total energy the sun has to burn is around 1.3 x 1044 Joules. Dividing 3.8 x 1026 Watts (the rate at which the sun is giving off energy) into this number gives an approximate value of 10 billion years for the sun's lifetime.

Answer 3

The core of the Sun is considered to extend from the center to about 0.2 solar radii. It has a density of up to 150,000 kg/m3 (150 times the density of water on Earth) and a temperature of close to 15,000,000 Kelvins (by contrast, the surface of the Sun is close to 6,000 Kelvins). Energy is produced by exothermic thermonuclear reactions (nuclear fusion) that mainly convert hydrogen into helium, helium into carbon, carbon into iron. The core is the only location in the Sun that produces an appreciable amount of heat via fusion: the rest of the star is heated by energy that is transferred outward from the core. All of the energy produced by fusion in the core must travel through many successive layers to the solar photosphere before it escapes into space as sunlight or kinetic energy of particles.

Answer 4

In the core, mostly.  Nuclear reactions can occur anywhere that particles collide at high energy, which includes the corona; however, such reactions are very rare due to the extremely low density of the matter there.

Answer 5

About the inner 20 percent of the radius, which contains about 35% of the mass.

R/Rsun, M/Msun, density (g/cm^3), temp (K), L/Lsun
0.00, 0.0000, 158, 1.50E+7, 0.0000
0.05, 0.0312, 109, 1.28E+7, 0.0366
0.10, 0.1000, 75.2, 1.10E+7, 0.3178
0.15, 0.2062, 49.7, 9.48E+6, 0.7051
0.20, 0.3500, 29.2, 8.14E+6, 0.9329
0.25, 0.5162, 17.2, 6.99E+6, 1.0000
0.30, 0.6500, 10.1, 5.99E+6, 1.0000
0.40, 0.8200, 3.50, 4.42E+6, 1.0000
0.50, 0.9200, 1.08, 3.25E+6, 1.0000
0.60, 0.9699, 0.336, 2.60E+6, 1.0000
0.70, 0.9774, 0.104, 1.94E+6, 1.0000
0.80, 0.9848, 0.032, 1.27E+6, 1.0000
0.90, 0.9924, 0.010, 6.00E+5, 1.0000
1.00, 1.0000, 0.003, 5.77E+3, 1.0000

You have to solve the equations of stellar structure to find out where the rms speed of protons and deuterium nuclei become too low to overcome the Coulomb force and where the density of protons and deuterium nuclei become too low for collisions to occur with enough frequency for hydrogen fusion to proceed continuously. The frequency of the nuclear reactions has a rather abrupt drop-off at a certain radius fraction (or mass fraction, if you've chain ruled the differential equations).

JG, yes, I'm a racist, and I don't sneak around about it. But you're wrong about the significance. Racism is a direct result of my appetite for knowledge. What the evidence says is I what I repeat, with no compromising the truth to flattery. The racists are right, and they always have been.

Answer 6

The sun does not have nuclear reactions to occur but it has hydrogen and helium explosions that are equal to nuclear explosions. The splitting of the atom is not a natural thing, it's man made.

Answer 7

there is not any wonderful tuning. If a meteor runs into earth, became into that wonderful tuning or is it by probability their paths intersected? wonderful tuning could be changing the process earth, the meteor or the two to aviod the collision. it is the place God is lacking. If God have been to alter the organic progression of activities, it is whilst we can say we've evidence of the supernatural or of an intelligence interacting.

Answer 8

Basically David S. makes this out to be a big, hard problem. It's not. You don't need differential equations or even a calculator, if you can do a simple square root in your head. I'm a plasma physicist David, who are you?

Answer 9

David S, Are you openly racist? That saddens me especially given your appetite for knowledge and worldliness.

Answer 10

The hot part.