Timeline for Why does the Sun's (or other stars') nuclear reaction not use up all its "fuel" immediately?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
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| Dec 9, 2019 at 12:50 | comment | added | Nadav Har'El | Exactly the question assumes that "The temperature and pressure everywhere inside the Sun reach the critical point to start nuclear reactions" but this assumption is false. The temperature in the Sun's core is actually a tiny fraction of what would require to fuse all protons as in an H bomb! Still, because of quantum tunneling, a tiny minority of the protons do fuse even in this "low" temperature. Because this is rare, it happens very slowly - but because there are so many protons in the sun, the total energy yield is high. | |
| Aug 9, 2014 at 18:32 | history | edited | dmckee --- ex-moderator kitten | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
added 3 characters in body
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| Aug 9, 2014 at 17:49 | history | answered | dmckee --- ex-moderator kitten | CC BY-SA 3.0 |