The Secrets Behind the Sun's Radiance: How It Shines
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Chapter 1: Understanding the Sun's Energy
From an early age, we've been aware of the Sun's role in warming and lighting our planet. Despite its significance, few pause to ponder: what causes the Sun to shine? What fuels its energy? Let’s explore these questions together.
The Sun is an immense sphere of gas, primarily made up of 73% hydrogen and 25% helium, with the remaining 2% consisting of heavier elements like nitrogen, carbon, oxygen, and silicon. The temperature at the Sun's surface is about 5800 degrees Celsius, soaring to around 15 million degrees at its core. For a long time, the source of this intense heat puzzled scientists, leading to various hypotheses that lacked observational support.
Source: skyeng.ru
At the beginning of the last century, British astrophysicist Arthur Eddington proposed a groundbreaking idea: the Sun functions as a colossal thermonuclear reactor, where nuclear fusion occurs. This process is akin to the reactions seen in hydrogen bomb detonations. Remarkably, the Sun emits as much energy in a single second as a billion hydrogen bombs combined.
Section 1.1: What is Fusion?
On Earth, when two atoms come close, they typically repel each other. However, the extreme temperature and pressure in the Sun’s core alter this dynamic. Here, when two hydrogen atoms collide, they fuse to form a new atom known as deuterium, which is lighter than its predecessors. This fusion releases energy in the form of a light particle known as a photon. Deuterium can then bond with another hydrogen atom, creating helium-3 and emitting another photon. When two helium-3 atoms collide, they produce helium-4, two hydrogen atoms, and yet another photon. Through a single chain of reactions, the Sun converts four hydrogen atoms into one helium atom and three photons, with approximately 10^38 reactions occurring every second.
Section 1.2: The Journey of Photons
Each photon generated carries substantial energy and can take tens of thousands, even millions, of years to traverse the Sun, colliding with atoms along the way. This interaction warms the Sun and transforms high-energy photons into a greater number of lower-energy photons, some of which eventually escape into space. Those that reach Earth provide us with essential light and warmth.
This intricate process of fusion, where hydrogen becomes helium, is how the Sun continuously generates energy.
Chapter 2: Engaging with Space Knowledge
To delve deeper into the mysteries of the cosmos, check out the following videos:
In "They Might Be Giants - Why Does the Sun Shine? (The Sun is a Mass of Incandescent Gas)", explore the fundamentals of solar energy generation and its implications for life on Earth.
The second video, "Why Does the Sun Shine? (The Sun Is a Mass of Incandescent Gas)", provides a deeper look into the processes fueling our Sun's radiant energy.
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