Warning: Technical Discussion, may not be P.C. Proven by Science, by building Hydrogen Bombs, (heckuva way to learn), only special Hydrogen atoms, Heavy Hydrogen, or Deuterium, may be made to fuse together, creating Helium atoms, while releasing extraordinary amounts of energy. Yes, Very Heavy Hydrogen works too, but it's extremely rare. Plain old Hydrogen atoms contain only one Proton and one Electron each. But Deuterium atoms contain a third particle, a Neutron. I fail to understand how the presence of the Neutron allows fusion to occur. What troubles me is that Deuterium exists only to the extent of 0.016% of regular Hydrogen on Earth. That's 156 Deuterium atoms to every million Hydrogen atoms, pretty scarce. This would mean the Sun has a much higher ratio of Deuterium to Hydrogen than we have here on Earth. Have not researched any of this, preferring rather to converse here (poor at "dry-learning"). Frank
@Bill Boggs Probably really fortunate, you are, if one is to believe the admonitions of my wife! Frank
From what I understand of the sun, it is an object composed of hydrogen and other combustible gases. And since hydrogen is the lightest element with an atomic weight of 1 then the sun has a very strong gravity since the gases couldn't escape from its hold. Pardon me if I would say that I'm not a bit interested in Deuterium but what I'm interested in is the sunspots. It is an area that is bigger than the size of the earth which is cold hence the lack of light. With the extreme heat emitted by the sun, how can a sunspot exist in the surface? Oh well, that question is not really needing an answer.
The sun as a hydrogen nuclear furnace is still just a theory which is wide accepted but not proven. The few draw backs to the theory are sun spots are holes in the outer surface but are colder and you can see into the sun which shows in inter part being cooler than the outer part. There have been photos of objects the size of the earth very close and looking like they are drawing energy from the sun. There is also other theory such as the electric sun which claims it is like a big capacitor. I don’t think they really know the truth yet and until they do it is very interesting