In the past, people thought that the sun was a giant "fireball", but now we know that the sun is not a fireball, but a giant "hydrogen bomb". It's just that the "hydrogen bomb" of the sun is very different from the ordinary hydrogen bomb. The nuclear hydrogen bomb will be enough, but the sun will not be instantaneous, but will last for tens of billions of years.
The energy released by the sun is enormous, but the earth can receive very little solar energy, and even less solar energy can eventually be used by humans. Assuming that the sun releases 22 trillion energy per second, then the earth receives only 10,000 energy, and only 1 can be used by humans.
The reason why the sun can release such a huge amount of energy is because the core of the sun is constantly undergoing nuclear fusion, and the principle of nuclear fusion is of course similar to that of the hydrogen bomb. In that case, why didn't the sun be as instantaneous as a hydrogen bomb?
To figure this out, we need to understand it at the source.
First of all, what is nuclear fusion? The "nuclear" here refers to the nucleus, and the nuclear reaction can be divided into two types, namely nuclear fusion and nuclear fission, as the name suggests, nuclear fusion is the fusion of small atomic nuclei into a larger nucleus, and nuclear fission is just the opposite.
In the process of nuclear fusion, there is a loss of mass, and the lost mass is presented in the form of energy formation, and mass and energy are equivalent.
As can be seen from Einstein's mass-energy equation, since the speed of light is a large number, a small fraction of mass can release a huge amount of energy.
The principle of the hydrogen bomb is nuclear fusion, which generally uses hydrogen or isotopes of hydrogen to fuse into the heavier element helium. In order to trigger nuclear fusion, the conditions required are extremely high, at least hundreds of millions of degrees of high temperatures are required. In order to reach such high temperatures, nuclear fusion requires a nuclear fission reaction to obtain a sufficiently high level of energy before it can initiate nuclear fusion.
And the core temperature of the sun reaches 15 million degrees, far from reaching hundreds of millions of degrees, it stands to reason that the sun cannot undergo nuclear fusion, but in fact it happens, why is this?
To put it simply, because the sun is massive enough and has enough matter.
How massive is the sun? By comparison, the mass of the earth is 60 trillion tons, and the mass of the sun is 330,000 times the mass of the earth.
The Sun has absolute dominance in the solar system, and the mass of the sun accounts for 99% of the mass of the entire solar system86%！It is no exaggeration to say that when the sun sneezes, the entire solar system will catch a cold.
Nuclear fusion of the sun takes place only in the core region, and the core form is the fourth form of matter: the plasma state, not the gaseous, liquid or solid state that we are familiar with. To put it bluntly, it is like a "particle porridge" that is completely free from the shackles of the atomic nucleus, and all kinds of particles are strung everywhere.
As I mentioned earlier, nuclear fusion is actually the fusion between protons, but the protons are positively charged and repel each other. If you want proton fusion, you have to overcome strong electrostatic repulsion. How did you overcome it?
First of all, there are four fundamental forces acting in nature, which are strong force, weak force, electromagnetic force, and gravitational force. The weak force will change the type of particle, which is mainly reflected in the phenomenon of decay, and the essence of decay is that the weak force is at work. In the core of the sun, a weak force causes protons to decay into neutrons.
However, electrostatic repulsion is an electromagnetic force, and the weak force is too weak compared to the electromagnetic force, so the probability of fusion is too low. Theoretically, it takes about every 1 billion years for one proton to combine with other protons to form a deuterium nucleus, which eventually fuses into helium and releases a huge amount of energy.
However, it is precisely because of the huge mass of the sun that the number of microscopic particles such as protons is of course extremely large, so even a very small probability event will become a high probability event in the face of such a huge total number of protons.
However, it is precisely because the probability of a single proton fusion is extremely low, or that the weak force is too weak, that the sun has been burning slowly, and it will not be like a hydrogen bomb in an instant.
How slow does the sun burn?
I won't mention the specific value, just know it by analogy. The power burned by the sun is basically equivalent to one-tenth of the electricity consumed by an adult!
It can be seen that the reason why the sun can release such a huge amount of energy is not because of how violent the solar nuclear fusion is, but because the mass of the sun is too large. The so-called "vigorous miracles" may be such a truth.
In other words, although the strength of the weak force is small, it is "just right" for the sun, because if the weak force becomes stronger, let's say 10% stronger, then the sun's lifespan will be shortened by about 20%. If it continues to get stronger, the life span of the sun will be shortened even more, and the sun will go out without even a chance for human beings to be born.
Finally, from a deeper perspective, the reason why the sun still undergoes nuclear fusion when the conditions are not enough is because of the "quantum tunneling effect".
Quantum tunneling, many people should have heard of it, in layman's terms, that is, microscopic particles can also have a certain probability of crossing the shackles of the "energy barrier" and completing events far beyond their own energy limits when their own energy is insufficient.
What is the "energy barrier", to put it bluntly, is the "limit value of ability". For example, no matter how hard you try, you can only jump a 2-meter high wall, then 2 meters is your "energy barrier", and theoretically, you can't jump a 10-meter high wall anyway.
But according to the interpretation of the quantum tunneling effect, you have a certain probability of obtaining extremely high energy and directly "passing through the wall", but this probability is very low, even in the microcosm The probability of happening is very low, but in the macrocosm it is actually impossible.
But again, due to the huge mass of the sun, there are almost infinite free particles, so the absolute number of particles that eventually break through the limit of the "energy barrier" through quantum tunneling and complete nuclear fusion is very large.
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