Exploring the Effects of Nuclear Fusion of the Sun

The sun which lies in the center of the solar system plays a very important role in the daily life of Earth as well as to the inhabitants which roam within it. The sun is composed of many layers, it could almost be compared to an onion. The sun provides plants with the required energy to grow, without the heat and light that the sun produces living creatures would not be capable of sustaining adequate life on Earth. If the Sun were to not exist within an hour of disappearance the Earth would become a dark and cold planet, within a few days plants would start to die due to no sunlight for energy, if not wilting due to the cool air.

The sun is composed of many coatings, with layers varying in temperatures. Unlike the globe, which is composed of mainly iron, rock, water, as well as many other components, the Sun is mainly constructed of hydrogen gas. Similar to the Earth, the core of the Sun is the hottest point. The sun is mostly formed of about seventy percent hydrogen and about twenty-eight percent helium. The remainder of the Sun is made of carbon, nitrogen, as well as oxygen which make up 1.5 percent of the overall mass, while the remaining 0.5 percent is composed of small amounts of other elements including elements such as neon, iron, silicon, magnesium, and sulfur. The core of the Sun reaches temperatures as high as fifteen million Celsius, also known as twenty-seven million Fahrenheit. In addition to the intense heat of the core of the sun, there is also intense pressure.

This is evident in the vast amount of hydrogen molecules in the Sun’s core which are compressed and heated to a point of fusing together. This process is known as nuclear fusion, this converts hydrogen molecules into helium, the by-product which is stored in the Sun’s core is a massive amount of energy which gets radiated to the outer layer of the Sun and to the rest of the solar system. The sun is able to sustain such intense pressure and heat due to the contracting inward pressure which is produced by the gravitational force of all the gases that surround it, this is approximately estimated to be equal to two hundred and fifty billion atmospheres also known as twenty-five point three, three trillion KPa, and fifteen point seven million kelvin. Scientists like to propose that nuclear fusion began when a vast cloud of gas and particles, also known as a nebula which is believed to be collapsed under the force of its own gravity, which is known to be labeled as the Nebula Theory.

The core of the Sun is the section that expands from the center to about twenty to twenty-five percent of the solar radius. The core of the sun is the only section of the Sun that produces a considerable quantity of heat through the use of fusion. If truth be told, ninety-nine percent of the Sun’s energy which is produced occurs within twenty-four percent of the Sun’s solar radius. At about thirty percent of the solar radius, fusion has concluded almost completely. The remainder of the Sun is heated through the energy which is conducted through the consecutive layers, in time arriving at the solar photosphere clearing into space as sunlight or the kinetic energy of particles. The sun exerts power at a mass-energy conversion frequency of four point two, six million metric tons per second, which manufactures the equivalent of thirty- eight thousand four hundred and sixty septillion watts (3.846×1026 W) of energy per second. To put that into interpretation, this would be equivalent to one billion, eight hundred twenty million Tsar Bombas or 9.192×1010( also known as nine thousand two hundred and eighty-three point ninety-two) megatons of TNT per second.

The radioactive zone of the Sun is the following layer from the core which expands to zero point seven percent of the solar radii. There is no thermal convection within this layer, however, the solar material within this layer contains enough heat and density to effectively rely only on thermal radiation to convey the intense heat in the core outwards. The succeeding layer is the convective zone which accounts for everything further than seventy percent of the inner solar radius or about two hundred thousand kilometers from the surface. In this section, the temperature is less than the radioactive zone and heavier atoms are not fully ionized. As a result, radioactive heat transportation is less successful, and the density is low enough to the point it allows convective currents to develop. This is also the layer in which sunspots occur, which emerge as darker areas compared to the surrounding area. These spots correlate to clusters within the magnetic flux field that inhibit convection and cause areas on the surface to decrease in temperature in comparison to the surrounding materials.

Ultimately, there is the photosphere, which is also known as the visible surface of the Sun. It is in this location that sunlight and heat are radiated and transferred to the surface and circulates into outer space. Temperatures in the section range between four thousand five hundred to six thousand kelvin. Due to the top of the photosphere being cooler than the lower section an image of the Sun will appear brighter in the middle than on the limb of the solar disk, this is a phenomenon known as limb darkening. There is enough hydrogen in the Sun to continue nuclear fusion for billions of years ahead, but unavoidably eventually all of the hydrogens would turn to helium causing the sun to collapse within itself. Without the Sun, Earth as humans know it will be a piece of ice on top on a rock. The sun warms our bodies of water to instate a process of water evaporation allowing proper weather cycles, such as rain, as well as providing photosynthesis for growing green plants that provide food and oxygen for the life on Earth.