Table of Contents
How do we know the age of the Sun?
4.603 billion years
Sun/Age
What does the Sun turn helium into?
When the temperature in the core reaches about 100 million degrees, the helium will begin to fuse into carbon by a reaction known as the triple-alpha process, because it converts three helium nuclei into one carbon atom. This generates a great deal of heat.
What happens when a star the size of the Sun runs out of hydrogen?
Our sun will spend about 10 billion years on the main sequence. Eventually the core of the star runs out of hydrogen. When that happens, the star can no longer hold up against gravity. Its inner layers start to collapse, which squishes the core, increasing the pressure and temperature in the core of the star.
How much hydrogen is in the Sun?
The sun is a big ball of gas and plasma. Most of the gas — 92\% — is hydrogen. It is converted into energy in the sun’s core….Abundance of elements.
| Element | Abundance (pct. of total number of atoms) | Abundance (pct. of total mass) |
|---|---|---|
| Hydrogen | 91.2 | 71.0 |
| Helium | 8.7 | 27.1 |
| Oxygen | 0.078 | 0.97 |
| Carbon | 0.043 | 0.40 |
How much helium does the Sun make?
In each nuclear conversion 4 hydrogen atoms are combined to produce a helium atom. This reaction occurs throughout the Sun and by this process our Sun converts 600 million tons of hydrogen into 596 million tons of helium every second.
What is the chemical composition of the planets in our Solar System?
The two largest planets, Jupiter and Saturn, have nearly the same chemical makeup as the Sun; they are composed primarily of the two elements hydrogen and helium, with 75\% of their mass being hydrogen and 25\% helium.
What is the composition of the Sun?
The sun is made up mostly of hydrogen, followed by helium. Nearly all the remaining matter consists of seven other elements — oxygen, carbon, neon, nitrogen, magnesium, iron and silicon. For every 1 million atoms of hydrogen in the sun, there are 98,000 of helium, 850 of oxygen, 360 of carbon, 120 of neon,…
How many protons electrons and hydrogen atoms are in the Sun?
The left side of this reaction shows four protons and four electrons, basically four hydrogen atoms. Hydrogen is the natural starting point, since most of the matter in the sun (and also the stars) is hydrogen gas.
What is the surface temperature of the Sun?
We know that the sun is a sphere of diameter 1,400,000 km, that its outer regions are hot gases, mostly hydrogen and helium, and that its surface temperature is about 6,000 degrees Celsius (about 11,000 degrees Fahrenheit).