how can sun be on fire?

Question

I know that sun is on fire but my biology teacher once told me that to create fire there must be oxygen,but in space there is no oxygen.So?

Answer 1

its a nuclear explosion! when you have hydrogen floating around in space it starts to fall together because of gravity and there is so much of it that it gets squeezed together to form helium and it releases heat and light. but in a few billions of years all the hydrogen will become helium and then it will blow up in what is called a supernova!

Answer 2

Dear Challenger...

You have just run into one of the problems of thinking with the human mind. We tend to analyze and make decisions with our minds based upon the knowledge and experiences stored within our memory. Sometimes when we don't have enough knowledge, we come up with these impossibilities.

The Sun is not on "fire" as you know it. That is, nothing is burning oxygen as it does here on Earth. The Sun is a fluid ball of gases, liquid gases and molten, almost metallic gases.
Its diameter is 109 times the diameter of Earth. So it is truly immense. The gases in the Sun are 73.5 percent hydrogen and 25 percent helium. Some traces of other gases make up the remainder.The unbelieveable weight of all that gas pushes down onto the gases in the center of the sun creating intense heat in the core. And the massive pressure plus the intense heat are causing the nuclear fusion of hydrogen into helium.

Nuclear Fusion gives off intense heat and radiation in the form of visable light, invisable light (Infrared and Ultraviolet),
X Rays, and Gamma Rays. All of that radiation is what you see and feel when you are exposed to the Sun on a cloud free day.

So, the light from the Sun is not from a fires that you have experienced all your life. It is from nuclear fusion which you will have to study and read about. Most people are not allowed to get close to nuclear power plants because of the danger of radiation poisoning and contamination. However, on a far smaller scale, inside those nuclear power plants nuclear fusion is going on in a similar manner to generate
electrical power for our homes and businesses. The intense heat they produce is used to convert water into steam and drive turbines which produce electricity. The excess heat is conducted away from the facility by various devices which are peculiar to the particular site in question. They may use underwater heat exchangers, or large cooling towers depending upon what works best for that area.

Good luck and see you next time,
Zah

Answer 3

its not really burning
its a nuclar reaction going on
but not that kind of nuclear reaction you can study in a nuclear power plant, its a different process

the sun formed from a hughe ammount of dust, hydrogene and other stuff clumping together over time.
stuff in unimaginable high ammounts.
this matter piles up on each other on its own gravity, and creates an enormous pressure in its core, which then leads to the point that some elements inside the sun convert into other elements by giving away energy in form of radiation, which again contributes to the heat.
so this way a kind of engine is running, which referred to as to be a 'nuclear fusion'
a similar process is acting inside a hydrogene bomb and in fact developping this weapon leads to the knowledge of understanding how the sun 'works'
this fusion keeps the sun hot and the process has been calculated to go on like this for the next 4 to 5 billion years

oxygene is not necessary to feed the fusion
instead oxygene is created as side-product of the fusion and can be found in the solar wind

Answer 4

The sun is not on fire. The processes in the Sun that create light and heat are different than those producing fire.
Fire and combustion break the bonds between atoms producing energy.
The production of energy and heat from the sun is due to nuclear fusion. Nuclear fusion occurs in the Sun's core, when two atoms of hydrogen merge to form one atom of Helium and lots of energy in the form of light and heat.

Answer 5

The sun is not on fire nor is it exploding. Nuclear fusion between two hydrogen atoms produce one helium atom with energy in the form of light and heat as byproducts. As one could predict, the amount of hydrogen in the sun is decreasing while the amount of helium is increasing. At some point the hydrogen will become so depleted that the sun will starts to undergo changes.

Answer 6

the sun is based on nuclear fusion, the sun is mostly made up of hydrogen, the hydrogen under gravity fuses to form helium, when elements fuse together like hydrogen to helium it causes tremendous energy, this is what happens to the sun. Don't need oxygen at all. You, however, need gravity, gravity is everything in the universe. Did you know that as the sun burns up its hyrdogen, it gets bloated and grows in size. Its going to turn into a red giant, eventually consuming Earth and our solar system, then collapsing on itself and exploding into a supernovae explosion. This will happen in about 4.5 billion years.

Answer 7

The sun is made of incandescent gases(H and He). The process that keeps the sun burning is nuclear fusion, the process in which 2 or more atom nuclei are joined together, creating energy. The hydrogen is fused into helium.

Answer 8

Through the nuclear explosions the sun creates many elements including oxygen.

Answer 9

it generates its own heat by nuclear fusion, by joining hydrogen atoms together to make helium.

Answer 10

as George would say, it's nucular.
the Sun isn't actually burning .. it's much worse than that.