How is the sun possible?

Question

The sun is basically a ball of fire, right?
But if it is, then how can it exist?
I mean, for fire you need oxygen but in space there is no oxygen, it's a vacuum.
Can someone tell me how the sun is possible please?

[This sounds like such a stupid question]

Answer 1

The Sun is not burning in a conventional way, like a candle on Earth does (the fuel in the candle is heated, and combines with oxygen to form a flame).

The Sun, however, undergoes nuclear fusion and is not a ball of fire, but of plasma (super heated gas in which protons, electrons and neutrons float about freely). In the core of the Sun, hydrogen particles are forced together due to the immense pressure of the Sun. The hydrogen atoms fuse, and form helium, releasing heat and light energy out towards space. Millennia ago, in places like Ancient Greece, this was interpreted as burning and the idea has stuck right to the modern day. The process, however, relies on nuclear fusion, not burning.

Answer 2

From studies of other stars which astronomers can see in many different stages of their 'life cycle', it seems pretty convincing from the data that the sun must have started out as a large collapsing cloud of gas inside some ancient interstellar cloud. This cloud was 'polluted' by a supernova several million years before the collapse phase ended, because we see certain isotopes of aluminum which could not have been a part of this cloud for very long unless they had been implanted by such an event.

The cloud collapsed for millions of years until it formed a rotating disk with a large central bulge. Out of the disk would eventually form the planets, and out of this central bulge where most of the mass wound up, formed the sun. We see such rotating disks of gas around many infant stars embedded in nebulae so this has confirmed this basic picture during the last 15 years or so. This isn't just 'theory' anymore.

The central bulge continued to collapse under its own gravity until deep in its interior the temperatures got so high...several million degrees....that deuterium atoms began to fuse and give off thermonuclear energy. This slowed the collapse down a bit and eventually led to a second stage where hydrogen nuclei could fuse into helium, which then started the sun's current evolutionary phase.

While all this was happening, the surface of the sun became very active and produced a powerful wind which blew out all of the remaining gas and dust in the surrounding disk of gas which had not settled into the bodies of the new planets that had formed. This 'T-Tauri wind' also scoured clean the atmospheres of the inner planets so that they were bare rock. Those that were volcanically active, however, were able to regenerate their atmospheres from the gases ejected by volcanic activity.

From start to finish, it took something like 100 million years to form the sun and planets from a collapsing cloud of gas, and this is not very long at all!!
Dr Sten Oldenwald

Answer 3

No, the sun is not a big ball of fire.

Fire that consumes oxygen is a chemical reaction. The Sun's heat/light/radiation is caused by a nuclear reaction, fusion.

The fusion reactions that power the sun are possible because it is massive (332,946 Earths worth of mass) enough to smoosh the nuclei of hydrogen atoms close enough together and subject them to so much heat that they slam together and fuse into helium nuclei. (Remember, heat is just atoms jiggling around) Helium nuclei are just a tad lighter than two hydrogen nuclei. That little extra bit of mass is spat out as heat and radiation. The light we see is from the gasses in the photosphere (sort of like the sun's atmosphere) being stimulated to glow like the gas in a neon tube. Only with the sun it isn't electricity, but radiation from the nuclear reactions that does the deed.

Answer 4

The sun is a giant ball of hydrogen. The gravity is so immense that the hydrogen molecules get so close together that nuclear fusion takes place and two hydrogen molecules fuse nuclei and electrons and turns into 1 helium atom. As this process occurs, a photon of light is emitted. As the supply of hydrogen dwindles over the next 5 billion years, the sun will turn into a red giant and begin to fuse helium atoms into heavier elements like lithium, carbon and oxygen.

So the sun is not burning per se, but it is immensely hot and it does emit light via nuclear fusion.

Answer 5

It's a pretty little thing called nuclear fusion.
The gravity of such a large ball of gas is so great that the atoms of the gas smash into each other to form heavier atoms, releasing energy. This energy causes more collisions hence more energy and so on and so forth. There is so much energy released that the atoms actually become liberated from their electrons and the whole mass exists as plasma.

That's the primary schooler explanation.

Ta.

Answer 6

The simple version is that the sun is a ball of HEAT

A ball of FLAME would act as you say; being extinguished by the lack of oxygen. It would also 'blow' itself out, by expanding into the vacuum around it very rapidly.

The difference is GRAVITY. The sun is massive (ie having MASS; nothing to do with size) enough to squash together so strongly under gravity that it causes heat-releasing reactions.

The pressure inside a bicycle pump heats it up; just imagine how much more pressure there is in the middle of the sun.

Answer 7

It is not a ball of fire. It is a ball of hydrogen bombs going off at the rate of billions every second. It is nuclear reactions and not fire, which is a chemical and not nuclear process, that keeps the Sun hot.

Answer 8

Nuclear fusion baby, nuclear fusion. The nuclear stuff we have got the hang of on earth is nuclear fission, and alot easier to control. Nuclear fusion though, is the daddy of all nuclear reactions.
If it's just a ball of fire, how come it's rays turn your skin brown and age you? It's nuclear rays honey, and they damage us carbon based life forms.
I see you have some pretty complex answers, but that's the gist of it.

Answer 9

The Sun burns hydrogen. It's not like a fire on Earth.

.

Answer 10

its not a ball of fire.
its a nuclear reaction, much like a nuclear reactor.
radiant heat isnt dependant on oxygen.