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The sun has always released energy, so why has it become stronger and stronger over billions of years?

It is itself that charges the sun

By Wu MuPublished about a year ago 6 min read
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Sun

We know that the sun has been burning energy to supply the vast solar energy of our solar system, the sun seems to have been contributing and releasing its energy, and technically speaking, hasn't it been losing energy or getting weaker for billions of years? So why does the sun seem to be getting stronger and stronger, and does it seem to have more and more energy inside it?

The sun, as we know, is losing energy, because it is indeed radiating its mass in the form of light and heat, but it is not getting "weaker", it is getting hotter, brighter, and stronger. To understand why, we must understand that the sun is almost 100% made of hydrogen, and before it dies, only about 10% of the hydrogen will be concentrated into helium, and most of the hydrogen will not reach the core, which, of course, is what energizes the sun itself.

The source of the sun's energy and its demise

We know that the sun is powered by the fusion of hydrogen into helium. This fusion takes place in the core. The star transforms matter into various substances through the process of nuclear fusion. The star consists of superheated gas and is bound by gravity. The core contains enormous pressure and temperature, strong enough to fuse atomic nuclei. Stellar fusion then converts mass into energy, such as nuclear reactions that combine atoms into heavier elements, although such reactions are quite complex and involve far more than two atoms, generally, the resulting atoms are almost as heavy as the sum of the atoms involved in the reaction.

In each fusion reaction, the Sun loses a very small amount of mass (a very small fraction of the total weight of the atoms), which is converted into heat energy. So the answer is yes, the star loses mass as it produces energy through fusion and then releases that energy into space. The Sun, for example, has lost about 100 times the mass of the Earth since it formed 4.5 billion years ago. However, this is still well under 1% of its total mass.

Not only do stars lose mass through stellar winds, but when stars have been burning for millions or billions of years, they also produce large amounts of particles known as stellar winds. Composed of charged particles of ions, consisting of free protons, electrons, or heavier nuclei leaping out of the stellar plasma under great magnetic forces and heat, the stellar wind gradually erodes the mass of the star over time. This mass loss is smaller than the mass conversion lost through fusion but is still significant. Since the Sun's formation, it has lost about 33 Earth masses due to the solar wind.

In addition to stellar winds, stars can also lose mass through explosions, and some stars have lost considerable mass in supernova explosions. Supernova explosions occur when a star's fuel becomes unstable and escapes, burning so hot that the star's outer layers are blown out into space. Supernova explosions usually occur at predictable stages of the star's life cycle, such as at the end of the star's red giant phase, when it breaks away from its outer layers to become a white dwarf. Unlike stellar winds and mass loss through nuclear fusion, a supernova can lose a large fraction of the star's mass in an instant, sometimes more than half of the star's total mass, leaving a much smaller star behind.

However, this series of processes in the Sun is producing heat to fuel the star, causing the outer layers to expand and emit light into space. As the star ages, more and more helium accumulates in the core. Because the core is not hot enough for helium to fuse, it just stays in the core, unable to resist the tremendous pressure from the star's upper layers.

As a result, the upper layers crush the core into a smaller volume because the helium is not helping to support the core. This puts more pressure on the core. More pressure = more heat. More heat means that the remaining hydrogen will fuse more quickly than before. Because it fuses faster, it generates higher energy and thus is better able to resist the crushing pressure of the upper layers and the system is once again in equilibrium.

Sun

But this has an additional effect; the luminosity of the Sun has increased and the corresponding core reaction has to be more frequent, stronger, and harder, so the Sun now shines brighter. The conclusion is that the sun's luminosity rises by 1% every 110 million years. Therefore, it was dim in the past and will be brighter in the future.

In about 600 million years, the increasing brightness will disrupt the carbonate-silicate cycle on Earth. This will cause the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere to drop dramatically to a level where C3 photosynthesis in plants no longer occurs. As a result, most plants (including all trees) will die.

The Future of the Sun

But the overall mass of the Sun is slowly declining as it continues to lose energy from radiant heat and all frequencies of the electromagnetic spectrum. In about 10 billion years the Sun will lose a significant amount of its mass, and its internal gravity will decrease outside of the level where the intermediate regions of the Sun will begin to expand due to the tendency for the pressure of the heated gases to exceed the collapse of gravity. Note that over time, not only hydrogen is converted to helium, but hydrogen will also lose mass with radiant energy, and the depletion of solar fuel (hydrogen) will cause the core to cool down over a long period.

If we could travel to a distant future and observe our Earth and sky, the Earth would be charred and the Sun would visually become a giant red entity taking up most of the visual sky! During these billions of years, the planetary orbits may expand a bit, but the expanding amorphous mass of the Sun getting closer to the planets will also mitigate this effect and limit the expansion of the planetary orbits to some extent. All the planets in our solar system are toast! At that point, it will be almost impossible for us to be anywhere in our solar system. Eventually, our sun will begin to shrink as the massive amount of hot gas in the periphery will begin to dissipate, and a more central collapse will occur. Since our sun is below the Chandrasekhar 1.44 solar mass limit, it will become neither a neutron star nor a black hole, and in about 10 billion years it will become a white dwarf ......

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About the Creator

Wu Mu

Dreams are not limited, nothing can be achieved

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