• Question: Where does the Sun come from

    Asked by harzard456 to Mike, Pip, Tianfu, Tim, Tom on 3 Jul 2012.
    • Photo: Tim Stephens

      Tim Stephens answered on 3 Jul 2012:

      The sun is a star that burns Hydrogen and turns it into Helium with nuclear fusion. The Hydrogen gas was created either in the Big Bang, or as the result of decay of other stars.

    • Photo: Tom Lister

      Tom Lister answered on 3 Jul 2012:

      So for some reason, a cloud of Hydrogen was left lying around after the big bang. After a while, the small amount of gravity from each bit of the cloud pulled it closer to the rest of the cloud, and this pull got stronger and stronger as the cloud became smaller and denser. Eventually, the pull became so strong that the atoms smashed into each other, fusing together to make bigger atoms (mostly helium) and producing a load of heat and light as by products, as well as enough outward force to stop it completely collapsing into a single point (that would be a black hole).

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