Amount of energy produced by sun?

Question

Knowing how much hydrogen is converted to helium, what is the equation for finding the amount of energy produced?

Also, how can I find out how much helium will be left over, i.e. how can I figure out how much hydrogen was converted into energy and not helium?

Answer 1

The bolometric luminosity of the sun is 3.826E+26 Watts, which means that 3.826E+26 Joules of energy are produced in the sun's core each second. That much energy is equivalent to 4.257E+9 kilograms of mass.

A nucleus of deuterium and one of tritium release 17.6 MeV upon becoming helium. One MeV is equal to 1.602E-13 Joules. If all the sun's luminosity originated in [D+T>He] reactions, the reaction rate would be 2.388E+39 reactions per second.

The mass of a proton or neutron is approximately 1.67E-27 kilograms, and deuterium and tritium have atomic weights of 2 and 3, respectively, meaning that five amu of heavy hydrogen is consumed per reaction to become helium, a free neutron, kinetic energy, and some gamma rays.

Answer 2

Energy Produced By The Sun

Answer 3

E=mc^2

I have read that the sun loses 4 million tonnes mass every second to radiation. So, you could work out the energy from the equation.

Convert 4 million to kgs and you get 4 billion.

That is 4 x 10^9 kgs

multiply by c^2.

C is 300 million metres per sec

that's 3 x 10^8 m/sec

square that and you get

9 x 10^16 m/sec^2

Multiply that by m

9 x 10^16 x 4 x 10^9 and you get

3.6 x 10^26 joules per second

To get some idea of that, 4 x 10^15 joules is about 1 megaton of TNT equivalent (a big H bomb)

so the sun produces energy of about 10^11 H bombs EVERY SECOND

That's about 100 billion H bombs every second going off.

Of course, Earth only receives about a 2 billionth of that energy, because from the sun's perspective the Earth is just a tiny speck in the sky, and so most of the sun's energy goes everywhere else.

Answer 4

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RE:
Amount of energy produced by sun?
Knowing how much hydrogen is converted to helium, what is the equation for finding the amount of energy produced?

Also, how can I find out how much helium will be left over, i.e. how can I figure out how much hydrogen was converted into energy and not helium?

Answer 5

What the Sun radiates is the result of nuclear fusion.
what happens in Nuclear fusion , Parent mass structures interact to form a new atomic structure. The component that went in to make up the new atom lose mass. This mass loss is called mass deffect in chemistry.By knowing the mass deffect of Hellium and multiplying be C^2 you calculate the energy produced by the sun on a per atom basis.
This mass loss is radiated from the Sun and travel at the velocity of light. So what we are actually receiving,in concrete terms, on earth from the sun is really radiated micromasses.
All this come from the fusion of Hydrogen which converts to form hellium.So conversion is not free and energy loss occurs in the process.