Follow up on the recent post *”how can the sun just continuously burn and burn?*”
Can someone explain how the sun actually started its nuclear fission?
Oppenheimer did not go a dropped a nuke on it 😉
In: 1
(Fusion, not fission)
The sun’s original heat came from the gravitational potential energy of the infalling gas of the primordial cloud. That energy was converted to heat via the pressure/volume relation, PV = nRT. Once it got hot enough, fusion kept it hot. (remarkably little fusion, actually. The sun makes about 275 watts per cubic meter in its core region. About the same as the compost pile in your garden. There’s just a shitload of it.)
Jupiter does not do fusion, but is still leaking away the original heat from its collapse and consolidation.
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