What Is The Sun Made Of
The Sun is the centerpiece of our solar system, the gravity force that keeps everything together. So, what is the sun made of?
What Is The Sun Made Of
The Sun is a star, one of billions in the known universe. It is similar to other stars you see in the night sky, but is prominent in our lives because we orbit it once every 365 days.
The process pivotal in the creation of the Sun goes on to this very day. Roughly 4.5 billion years ago, a massive gas cloud surrounded by dust began to compress. As one small part gained in density, it started to produce a small gravitational pull. Over time, this sucked the rest of the gas and dust into an increasingly smaller area. Nobody is sure what first set off the gravity movement, but it may have been a supernova.
As the disk of material compressed, it created more gravity and sucked in more material. With spin induced, the disk produced heat. The gases being sucked into the forming Sun were primarily hydrogen, which makes up 90 percent of the atoms in space. Throw in a bit of helium and trace elements and you have a cauldron that eventually became our Sun.
The actual process that fuels our Sun is called fusion. Fusion is fueled by the elements of the Sun to create what is essentially a ball of plasma. The atomic elements that act as fuel for this process are hydrogen and helium atoms. Hydrogen makes up roughly 74 percent of the mass of the Sun. Helium makes up roughly 24 percent. The remaining one percent consists of trace elements such as iron.
At its core, the Sun is essentially a nuclear reactor. The extreme gravitational compression of hydrogen and helium elements causes the atoms to break down, releasing massive energy. The resulting energy that is released creates heat and radiation, which is the basis of most life in our solar system.
What is the Sun made of? Hydrogen and helium elements under extreme pressures.
