Why does sun go on shining?

Question

The energy in the sun commencing from since when it has been starting glore. Why does the sun go on shining?

Answer 1

It takes a million years for a particle of light from the center of the sun to reach the sun's surface. That's why it seems to go on forever.

Answer 2

  The sun has enough hydrogen to last another 5 or so billion years.

Answer 3

it shines due to fusion reaction in its core.. the sun is massive hydrogen ball , this hydrogen is the fuel for teh fusion in its core which realeses tremendous amount of energy in the form of heat and light ..  and also gravity,

Answer 4

i dont know. becuase i dont understand what stop the fuel from just burning and hwo do we know how much fuel is left?

Answer 5

The Sun is massive.  It is a huge ball of hydrogen and helium, always creating nuclear fusion to release immense energy.  Think of it this way; if you put together all the planets, asteroids, and other space material in our Solar System together, it would make up only 2% the size of the Sun.  The Sun makes up 98% of all matter in the Solar System.

Because it is so big, it takes billions of years for all the fuel to be burned up.  On average, stars that are about the size of the Sun have a life expectancy of 10 billion years.  The Sun is 5 billion years old.  Therefore, it still has plenty of fuel to burn for the second half of its life.

The Sun will continue to shine until right before the end of the 10 billion years.  It will expand very much and have a very low density, then very quickly shrink into a small, cold, rocky ball.  All the planets would have been consumed by the Sun while it was expanding.

Well, I hope that explains it a bit more for you.

Adam

Answer 6

The Sun shines and lives its "life" by converting hydrogen into helium. In fact an average of 4 million tons of hydrogen every second is converted into helium at the Sun's surface. It may seem hard to imagine that a star even the size of the Sun could have so much fuel but it does. However, our star is mortal just like everything in our galaxy and in about 5 billion years the Sun will begin its death process. At this point the Sun will have used up all of its hydrogen fuel and will be burning on helium. This burns so much hotter that it will only burn for around 2 billion years. During this stage of the Sun it will swell up to 100 times bigger than it is today and be known as a red giant. It will engulf Mercury and Venus and Earth will be next on the menu unless it can get a widening of its orbit. Scientists think that the odds of this occurring are one in 100,000 (about the chance of winning the lottery.) Even if it does get a widening orbit it will now be just a surface of molten rock barren of any form of life. The Sun can't get any hotter now to fuse any elements so it collapses into a small star known as a white dwarf. It won't be any larger than about the size of present day Earth. Remaining planets will revolve around what used to be our Sun for about 100 billion years when it becomes so cold and small that it will be just a dead star known as a black dwarf. With the death of our Sun our entire solar system will be an unrecognizable place with many events occurring over the course of the next quadrillion years until our entire solar system has its death as well.

Answer 7

Geez, people. The sun is not in flames! It's not burning! It's very hot, true, but it's powered by Nuclear Fusion. Not by burning.

In the Sun atoms of light elements merge together in a process called nuclear fusion. This releases tremendous amounts of energy. But not all atoms merge at the same time. The merging is relatively rare even within the sun. Only a very very tiny percentage is needed for the energy output we observe. And even the merged atoms can sometimes merge a second time for a bit less energy.

Fusion is a process that Humans are also beginning to master. It's much better than Nuclear Fission, and it's being researched in experimental reactors funded by the EU and Japan for example.

Edit: How do we know how much fuel is left? Because we can estimate the energy output of the Sun and compare it to it's mass, which can be rather easily calculated from its gravity. Comparing these two will yield an estimate of how much fuel is left. And it's 5 billion years. But only after 1 billion years, the Sun will become too hot for us to exist in this planet because the Oceans will dry up. Don't hold your breath though, 1 bn years is a looong time. All of recorded Human history is less than 0.0006% of that time.

Answer 8

Because it's a massive ball of burning gasses.  And it's still so hot that it burns you from 92 million miles away.

Answer 9

The sun goes on shining because it is composed of Hydrogen, Helium, and Oxygen (some of the most flammable elements).  So as long as it has plenty of those elements to keep it aflame, it will keep on blazing.

In a few million, or even billion, years, the sun will eventually be depleted of these elements and will become unstable and collapse upon itself.  Even when that happens, we won't see it happen for decades, even centuries, after it happens because of how far away it is.

Answer 10

The sun is huge. It is a huge ball of nuclear fusion. All stars wiill eventually run out of gas and "burn out". The sun's burning date is set in about 5 billion years... not in 2012.

Answer 11

It goes on shining because there is still plenty of fuel left in it. When it runs out of fuel it will go out. This won't happen for billions of years.