I know that there was all that matter and energi and then the dustclouds. Also that the cloud began whirling, and THEN the sun appeared. But how did the sun come from that? Everything i’ve read just say that it suddenly appeared. I need help
In: Physics
Stars don’t “suddenly” appear. They evolve from gas clouds. In a nutshell, a gas cloud is mostly hydrogen with some helium and a few atoms here and there of everything else. These atoms bump into each other and subtly change each other’s speed and momentum. Now that there are two atoms travelling together, they attract a few more (due to gravity), and a few more and a few more…until you get a dense region of mostly hydrogen. At some point gravity of that clump will start compressing the innermost part of the clump, so it will be denser than the rest…and as more gas is added, the higher the mass of the clump, the stronger the gravity, compressing hydrogen more and more. What happens when you compress a gas? It warms up. So now you have a region that’s hot and under pressure. As more material gets added, it gets warmer and warmer and warmer and of course the pressure grows – gravity is pulling all the matter towards the hot, dense center, to a point where hydrogen atoms are close enough that they start combining with each other into helium and releasing energy. This is nuclear fusion….if the mass is large enough, it will continue pressing onto the center of the star, maintaining the temperature and pressure needed for fusion to continue. All that heat generated by the fusion will push against the mass pressing onto it above and achieve an equilibrium that will allow the star to fuse material for billions of years. Other processes are involved and there are different outcomes depending on the original mass, but this is in a nutshell how stars evolve.
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