How does the SUN keep burning so bright and so much heat when there is no oxygen in outer space .?

Question

It takes fuel and oxygen to make and keep a fire going yet in outer space there is no oxygen so how does the sun after millions of years still brun and give off so much heat?

Answer 1

The Sun generates energy via fusion reactions, not fire, so it doesn't need oxygen. Just lots of hydrogen to fuse into helium.

Answer 2

The suns version of "heat" ios like compaaring a nice, toasty fireplace to a hydrogen bomb. One will provide warmth directly, the other will produce immence heat FROm leveling a city. Simply put, the sun is burning, but not like a fire. Inside the sun's core, the sun has a insane amount of hydrogen. Using processes on Nuclear Fusion, it fuses two hydrogen atoms into a helium atom, making a plasma that gives off heal and light. This is because the suns core is more than hot enough to perform the reactions, since it is over 15,000,000 degrees Celcius (over 27,000,000 degrees fahrenheit!!!!). Thus, it can constantly fuse the atoms and give off a steady supply of light, energy, and heat.

As for the oxygen question: there is actually oxygen in space! The problem is, not enough to breathe. Its almost like water in a sence: its there, but we cant use it (In waters case, however, its bonded with two hydrogen atoms, so its not a surprize we cant use it...) and therefore, we arnt able to breathe.

Answer 3

Fire is a chemical reaction. For example, the carbon in the molecules making up wood react with the oxygen in the air; if the wood is hot enough, it will burn. The reaction produces light directly (some of which is infrared light, absorbed by our skin -- and other material around the fire -- as heat).

Any object heated to a high temperature will emit light without actually burning (no "fire"). For example, electricity forced through a tiny tungsten wire, as in a light bulb, will cause the wire to get very hot (around 3000 K or 5500 F) and emit the light we get from light bulbs. There is no oxygen in a light bulb. In fact, if any air enters the light bulb, the oxygen will cause the tungsten to burn (even though it is a metal) and the wire turns to dust: the light burns out.

The Sun produces lots of energy at the centre, through fusion reactions. Approximately 15 million degrees K. By the time this energy leaks to the Sun's surface, mostly through convection (meaning: as heat, not as light), it heats the surface to almost 6000 K (over 10,000 F). This is so hot that the surface emits light, even though there is no fire.

This is the same idea as the glow from the element of an electric stove: it glows red when it is very hot, even though there is no fire (unless you spill something flammable on it, of course).

Answer 4

They're two different types of reaction.

The fusion of hydrogen into helium in the Sun is a nuclear reaction created by the pressure of so much mass compressing together near the center due to gravity.

Fire is a chemical reaction and needs an oxidizer. Oxygen is a common oxidizer within our atmosphere (hence where the name oxidizer came from?), but isn't the only oxidizer that can be used in chemical reactions. Different substances are used as oxidizers when oxygen is inconvenient or unavailable. Thrusters for satellites in space would be an example (nitrogen tetroxide is a common oxidizer in thrusters - admittedly, oxygen is a component of nitrogen tetroxide molecules, but it's the contribution of electrons, not the oxygen itself that makes a substance an oxidizer).

Answer 5

The Sun ( and all other stars) produce light by a complex Fusion - Fission reaction:

4 Hydrogen are fused into 1 Helium nucleus, emitting one photon. Then most (but not all) Helium nucleai break apart when struck by that photon back into Hydrogen.

Eventually, all of the Hydrogen gets converted into Helium. At that point the star continues to fuse Helium into heavier and heavier elements (Li, C, etc.) until the cycle reaches iron. At that point, no further fusion is possible.

Don't worry tho...there's about 5 Billion years worth of Hydrogen left. BUT, when the hydrogen is exausted, the sun will change colors (from yellow-orange to red), and expand until the outer edges of the surface pass Mars.

Answer 6

The nuclear fusion reaction turns hydrogen atoms into helium atoms. This process releases energy, because the mass of the product is fractionally smaller than the mass of the starting material, and the mass difference is released as energy, the relationship between the amount of mass converted and the energy thus produced being: E = MC^2, where E = energy, M = mass and C = speed of light. This is a nuclear reaction, and is totally unrelated to the chemical reactions by which fuel is burned in fires.
In a fire, molecules are simply converted into other molecules- oxides, specifically, but the atoms that make up these molecules are unchanged. in nuclear fusion, the atoms themselves are altered.

Answer 7

The sun is constantly preforming Hrdrogen fusion. Which doesnt require oxygen. Hydrogen atoms compress together and form Helium atoms. The helium releases its energy as light and heat and then splits back into Hydrogen.

Answer 8

Nuclear Fusion baby! requires no oxygen, just the high speed collision of hydrogen atoms to make helium and give off a ton of heat

Answer 9

The sun could be at the bottom of a huge lake, and still "burn".... it's not burning in the conventional sense - it's really nuclear fusion. It's combining 4 hydrogen atoms to make one helium atom - billions of times a second.

We can reproduce this action with a hydrogen bomb - but where ours is over in a few millionths of a second, the sun continues to 'burn' like this - and will, for billions of years.

Answer 10

The Sun doesn't burn. It stays so hot because hydrogen atoms fuse into helium atoms and a little bit of mass is "lost" in the process. That "lost" mass is converted into energy.

E=m*c*c
Einsteins a pretty smart guy.