Table of Contents
What happens to the helium formed in the Sun?
What happens to the Helium? Most stars, after converting a significant portion of their hydrogen to helium undergo an internal change. After the red giant phase, the Sun will lose its outer layers leaving behind its helium-rich core (called white dwarf), which will gradually cool over the lifetime of the Universe.
How is hydrogen converted to helium in the Sun?
In the core of the Sun hydrogen is being converted into helium. This is called nuclear fusion. It takes four hydrogen atoms to fuse into each helium atom. During the process some of the mass is converted into energy.
How much hydrogen is converted to helium each second in the Sun?
It fuses about 600 million tons of hydrogen every second, yielding 596 million tons of helium. The remaining four million tons of hydrogen are converted to energy, which makes the Sun shine.
Can the Sun fuse helium?
Instead, our Sun will burn through the hydrogen in its core, and then will contract and heat up until it can begin fusing helium in its core.
Where is the helium in the Sun?
Core – the innermost 20–25% of the Sun’s radius, where temperature and pressure are sufficient for nuclear fusion to occur. Hydrogen fuses into helium (which cannot itself be fused at this point in the Sun’s life). The fusion process releases energy, and the core gradually becomes enriched in helium.
Can helium be made from hydrogen?
Helium is the second lightest and second most abundant element in the observable universe (hydrogen is the lightest and most abundant). Large amounts of new helium are being created by nuclear fusion of hydrogen in stars.
How much hydrogen is converted to helium each second in the Sun give your answer in KG?
The Sun fuses 600 billion kg (that is 600 x 109 kg) of hydrogen every second.
How does the percentage composition of hydrogen gas and helium gas in the Sun change with time?
About 73% of the Sun’s mass is hydrogen, and another 25% is helium….Composition of the Sun’s Atmosphere.
| Table 1. The Abundance of Elements in the Sun | ||
|---|---|---|
| Element | Percentage by Number of Atoms | Percentage By Mass |
| Hydrogen | 92.0 | 73.4 |
| Helium | 7.8 | 25.0 |
| Carbon | 0.02 | 0.20 |
How much helium does fusion produce?
The Sun is a main-sequence star, and, as such, generates its energy by nuclear fusion of hydrogen nuclei into helium. In its core, the Sun fuses 620 million metric tons of hydrogen and makes 616 million metric tons of helium each second.