THE BURNING STAR

Have you ever wondered how enormous and powerful our Sun is? This article gives you the detailed explanation about the structure of the Sun. What is it composed of? The fusion reaction taking place inside the sun. And what happens to our solar system without the presence of the sun?  

Even though there’s a million stars there in outer space, the one star that we people admire the most is ‘The Burning Star‘ (i.e.) ‘The Sun ‘- The star that keeps on burning for nearly 4.5 billion years. If we see the sun from Earth, all we see is just a big glowing ball hanging in space.. If we go a little closer on the planet Mercury, we see a huge glorious hot and burning ball which often bursts the solar flares, where the temperature on the outer surface of the sun is nearly 10000 degrees Fahrenheit (5500 degree Celsius) . If we still go closer that is inside the sun – It is impossible to go inside the sun, but if we look inside the sun, lots and lots of reaction is taking place inside it. The temperature is almost 28 million degrees Fahrenheit (15.5 million Celsius) at the core.  

The sun is composed of gasses. It has no solid surface. Still it has a defined structure. The major structural areas inside the sun are

1. Core –  The center of the sun comprising 25% of radius…
2. The radiative zone –  The section immediately surrounding the core ,which comprises 45% of its radius.
3. Convection zone  – The outermost ring of the sun , comprising 30% of its radius.
Above the surface of the sun is its atmosphere. Has 3 parts
1. Photosphere -The innermost part of the sun’s atmosphere and the only part we can see..
2. Chromosphere -The area between photosphere and the corona which is hotter than photosphere.
3. Corona– Extremely hot outermost layer , extending outward several million miles away from chromospheres  

‘Why is the sun burning all the time? ‘ The Sun has been burning till now for almost 4.5 billion years. It is a massive collection of gas mostly of hydrogen and helium. Since it is so massive, it has immense gravitational force to hold all the hydrogen and helium together. And also it holds all the planets in their orbit around the sun. And in the sun the fusion reaction takes place all the time. The hydrogen gas present in the sun gets squeezed so that 4 hydrogen together forms a helium atom. This is called nuclear fusion. In this reaction some of the mass of the hydrogen atom gets  converted into energy in the form of light. The sun doesn’t blow into pieces because of the tremendous gas above. It just exactly balances the pressure from all the energy produced.  

When this super-massive Sun ran out of hydrogen fuel in its core, it would switch over to converting atoms of helium, and then atoms of carbon (just like our own). This process would continue, with the Sun consuming heavier and heavier fuel in concentric layers. Each layer would take less time than the last, all the way up to Iron – which could take just a day to burn through.
Then, iron would start to build up in the core of the star. Since iron doesn’t give off any energy when it undergoes nuclear fusion, the star would have no more outward pressure in its core to prevent it from collapsing inward. When about 1.38 times the mass of the Sun is iron collected at the core, it would result in releasing an enormous amount of energy.  

What happens to our solar system? Within eight minutes, the amount of time it takes for light to travel from the Sun to Earth, an incomprehensible amount of energy would sweep past the Earth and destroy everything in the Solar System. The energy released from this might be enough to briefly outshine the galaxy, and a new nebula (like the “Crab Nebula”) would be visible from nearby star systems, expanding outward for thousands of years.  

All that would remain of the Sun would be a white dwarf until it burns itself out and becomes a so-called black dwarf. And of course, this won’t be happening for another 6 billion years or so. By that point, humanity will either be long dead or have moved on. And as a result there would be no solar system without the Sun.