Ever Wonder What Makes the Sun Tick? (Spoiler
1. The Sun's Elemental Recipe
Okay, so you look up at the sun (carefully, of course — don't stare directly at it!) and you think, "Wow, that's a big ball of something." But what is that "something"? Well, if were going to get technical, its mostly hydrogen and helium. In fact, those two elements make up about 98% of the suns total mass. Thats a whole lotta H and He! The remaining 2%? A smattering of other elements, like oxygen, carbon, neon, and iron. Think of it like a cosmic soup, but instead of noodles, youve got atoms whizzing around at incredibly high speeds. Definitely not your average kitchen concoction.
Imagine the sun as a giant gumball machine, but instead of different flavored gumballs, it's packed with different elements. Hydrogen would be the overwhelmingly dominant flavor — like, 91% of the gumballs are hydrogen-flavored! Helium would be the second most popular flavor, making up about 8.9% of the gumballs. Then you'd have trace amounts of other, more exotic flavors, like oxygen, carbon, and neon, all mixed in to give the sun its unique personality. This elemental recipe makes the sun a star unlike any other, and is the key to everything the sun brings to our solar system.
But why hydrogen and helium? Well, these are the simplest and most abundant elements in the universe. Think of them as the building blocks of everything. They were created in the Big Bang, and they're still being created in stars like our sun through nuclear fusion (more on that later!). The sun is a star, and stars are cosmic element factories. Hydrogen is constantly being fused into helium at the Suns core, releasing enormous amounts of energy in the process that is essential to sustaining life on Earth.
And what about the other elements? Where did they come from? Well, those elements were created in the cores of other stars that lived and died long before our sun was even born. When those stars exploded as supernovae, they scattered those elements throughout the universe, like cosmic confetti. Some of that confetti eventually made its way into the cloud of gas and dust that formed our solar system, and eventually, our sun. So, in a way, the sun is made up of stardust. How cool is that?
