What is the source of the Sun's energy? How does the sun, a big ball of hydrogen, produce so much heat?
There wouldn't be any light, warmth, or life without the Sun.
The Sun releases more energy every 1.5 millionths of a second than all people consume in a whole year.
The heat of the Sun affects the environments of all of our solar system's planets, dwarf planets, moons, comets, and asteroids.
How does a Big Ball of Hydrogen produce so much Heat?
The answer in short is that it is big.
If it were smaller, it would merely be a ball of hydrogen, similar to Jupiter.
But compared to Jupiter, the Sun is much bigger.
To fill it full, almost 1,000 Jupiters would be needed!
That is a lot of hydrogen.
That indicates that it is held together by a great deal of gravity.
And that indicates that there is a great deal of pressure inside of it.
In reality, the pressure is so intense and the density so high that the Hydrogen Atoms clash with such force that they literally fuse into a new element, Helium.
This process, referred to as Nuclear Fusion, releases energy while creating a chain reaction that allows it to happen repeatedly.
That energy builds up. It gets as hot as 27 million degrees Fahrenheit (around 15 million degrees Celsius) at the center of the Sun (Sun’s core).
In other words, the Sun's temperature can reach 27 million degrees Fahrenheit in its core.
The energy goes outward via a large region known as the convective zone.
It then travels onward to the photosphere, where it emits heat, light, and charged particles.
This heat drives the chemical reactions that enable life on Earth, permits gases and liquids to exist on many planets and moons, and causes frozen icy comets to form blazing halos.
These particles form a "solar wind" that exerts pressure on the fabric of interstellar space billions of miles away.
And that light travels far into the entire cosmos, where it is coming from only one star among billions.
In Short -
The source of the sun's energy is nuclear fusion, a process in which two atoms of hydrogen are combined to create one atom of helium.
In other words, the sun's energy comes from nuclear fusion reactions taking place in its core, where hydrogen atoms are combined to form helium.
This reaction releases a tremendous amount of energy in the form of light and heat, which is then transferred through the layers of the Sun's interior. This energy is then released into space and is a renewable energy source.