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HOW DOES THE SUN GENERATE
ENERGY?
The interior of the sun is a kind of thermonuclear bomb of fusing material, mainly of hydrogen atoms under extreme pressure and temperature controlled at a giant scale, because of its enormous amount of particles interacting at high energy, it generates an electromagnetic field that helps maintaining it for an extremely long time. In the Sun there are trillions of particles in constant rotation colliding, in constant fission and fusion, mainly using hydrogen ions to convert them in helium ions in a chain reaction.
In the sun it can be identified different layers that vary in density, temperature, pressure and behavior: the “thermonuclear core”, the “radiative zone”, the “convection zone”, the “photosphere”, the “chromosphere” and “solar corona”. The plasma is transparent to its own radiation. The “thermonuclear core” has a spherical shape due to the action of gravity on the particles compressing towards the center, with a radius of 170,000 km. which
The “radiative zone” can include the core so that together it is credited a radius of 580,000 km, accounting for 80% of the radius of the sun. Without considering the core, this layer would be 410 000 km thick. There is great compression on this layer, which is a bit less dense (20 tons/m3 to 20 0 kg/m3), but the pressure and the energy from the core of energized atoms generates vibrations emanating short electromagnetic wavelengths that transport heat and light to the surface.
This layer is highly ionized (hydrogen and helium), and fed by electromagnetic radiation from the nucleus which allows heat to flow into transporting heat to the top layers, maintaining strong emission behavior in the center and towards the poles. Maintaining high temperatures (from 10 million°C to 2 million ° C at the top) and pressures are still high (225 billion Earth atmospheres to 45 atmospheres billion earth) so that the plasma material remains in a state of uniform rotation behavior (presumably slower than the nucleus). There is a layer called “tachocline” between the radiative zone (with plasma behavior) to the convection zone (with gas behavior) which is 150,000 km deep with a thickness of 30,000 km that is where the pressure and density is much lower.
Above, there is a layer of “convection” of 150,000 km thick which extends to 500 km deep just below the photosphere, where the pressure is suddenly reduced and hence the temperature drops from its lower from 2 million°C to 6000 ° C. Matter is still in the form of plasma (the vast majority of hydrogen ions), but begins to have a behavior similar to an ocean. Convection processes occur where spin columns will generate large amounts of heat that carry hot materials to the photosphere of the Sun and other ionized atoms returning less energized to be energized again in the bottom. These turns emit electromagnetic radiation perpendicular to the surface across the sun’s surface that adds to the macro-electromagnetic emission from the sun with a different behavior of ultra energy photons.
The “photosphere” is the thinnest layer of the sun (between 100 km and 500 km of depth) and is what we actually see with a density of from 0.2 to 0.0002 kg/m3. It has an average temperature between 6000 ° C and 4500 ° C on the surface. It is transparent to photons of certain waves and emits a continuous radiation spectrum. It is entirely gaseous, since there is virtually no pressure, and nothing can land on it. Convection cells have up to 1000 kilometers in diameter with a life of 8 minutes.
The “chromosphere” is the least dense layer of the sun (0.000005 kg/m3), so it is in the plasma state with gaseous behavior. It has about 2,500 km thick and a huge volume, but here the pressure is much lower, the temperature increases again as it reaches the 2 million ° K. Here solar phenomena occur as peaks prominences and ionized atoms of hydrogen and helium. During periods of high solar activity, the sun performs coronal mass ejections over 10×10-9 tons of solar plasma that are emitted into space and speeds up to 1000 km per second. If these are directed to Earth they could significantly alter the magnetic environment of the Earth.
The “solar corona” has a density of 1×10-12 kg/m3. It is very light, it is trapped in the electromagnetic field of the sun, and is composed of hydrogen and helium atoms at high temperature in contact with the “chromosphere” (1 million ° C) which are ionized into plasma, where the heat is tenuous at high density and large volume, and charged particles move at different speeds energy. It can be seen during an eclipse when a new moon covers the photosphere.
