What Causes the Sun to Give off Heat?

How Does The Sun Works | Sun has been the source of energy and light for our galaxy for years. It has been giving us warmth even before we exist. The heat and light produced by the sun is an important source of life. Vitamin-D produced is very important to nourish our bones. The light is very necessary for our daily life. Not only for us but also for the living beings. Plants make their food by the process of photosynthesis, where photo means the sunlight and as it is known without plant we are blind. So it became necessary to know how this sun produces heat and light

Lets first find how the sun produces a huge amount of heat and light. The main reason for the production of a huge amount of heat is fusion. The Sun produces light through a process which is nuclear reaction known as fusion. The nuclear fusion of hydrogen with helium in its core is the actual reason for producing heat. As the fusion occurs it produces light but a surprising fact is that Sunlight appears white, but it is actually a mixture of all the colors of that we see in rainbow: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet As there are huge number of hydrogen atom, these atoms come together and stick to each other and fuse into helium in its core. The energy after the fusion then radiated from the core, that is from the sun towards the solar system.

There are three main parts of the sun. first is its core part, second is its radiative zone surrounding the core part and the last part is the convective zone around the radiative part. The core part of the sun is 25 percent of the total. The radiative part is of about 45 percent and the last part that is the convective part is of about 30 percent of the sun The gravity of the sun which pulls its mass inward is responsible of creating a lots of pressure in it and due to which it forces the atoms of sun to undergo the fusion reaction and the hydrogen fuse tighter in nuclear reaction like nuclear bomb that is produced by human now.

Another thing is that two atoms have the tendency to repel each other. for the fusion to occur this repulsion should be overcome and move closer so that is bond tighter and together. Due to the pressure it comes closer and forms the nuclear reaction.

The light we see coming from the sun is the energy of the sun escaping from the sun in the form of thermal radiation. At the normal temperature that is below 600 degree Celsius, the thermal radiation is not visible by any object because it is concentrated in the infrared region of the spectrum. But at sufficiently high temperature, the energy gets shorter that is it has a shorter wavelength which can be seen by us. A very practical example is of glowing of the red-hot piece of iron which becomes white at higher temperature etc.

The density of the sun is about 150 g/cm 3 with the temperature of almost 13,600,000 K and the sun is extended from the center of about 0.25 of the solar radius. The production of energy by nuclear fusion which occurs in a series of steps called the photon-photon chain (P-P), which is the conversion of hydrogen into helium. The only part of the sun that is its core part that produces 99 % of heat through fusion whereas the rest part of the body is heated by the transfer of energy to the outward from the core layer by layer. Then the energy travels from many layers of the solar photosphere before it could escape into space that is sunlight in this case as kinetic energy. the photon-photon chain reaction (P-P) occurs around 9.2×10 37 times every second, and the fusion of hydrogen into helium release 0.7% energy of the fused mass-energy. Hence the production of mass-energy conversion is at the rate of 4.26 million metric tones per second by the sun.

Now come to the second layer, which is radiative zone, where the solar material is very hot and have high density so that thermal radiation is all that is needed to transfer the intense heat towards the out. There is no thermal convection occurs. As the altitude increases the material becomes colder. The gradient of temperature is less than the adiabatic lapse rate and that’s why it cannot drive convection. As the ions of hydrogen and helium emit photons travel a small distance and then they are reabsorbed, the heat is transferred.

The energy from the sun gives off different kinds of light, like ultraviolet light and visible light. Microwaves, infrared light, radio waves and X-rays also come from the sun. The sun also provides us energized particles that make up solar wind and from its that is the energy from solar wind warms the Earth and influences the weather. We are privileged that most of the sun’s radiation does not harm us but instead makes our lives