Collaborators

Nuclear fusion. How does it work?

well, in a nutshell, stars are made of hydrogen. As they burn it into energy, their core gets smaller and the star gets bigger. Its estimated the sun gets 1% larger every 100 million years. As the core gets denser and denser, the star gets hot enough to fuse hydrogen into helium, helium into carbon, carbon into oxygen, oxygen into neon, neon to magnesium, and then finally, iron. Iron can no longer be fused, and the star dies.



for more information, you can check my sources.


Sources:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Eez2lYCXuFE

https://youtu.be/0GOPAxEBDro

https://www.energy.gov/science/doe-explainsnuclear-fusion-reactions#:~:text=Nuclear%20Fusion%20reactions%20power%20the,The%20leftover%20mass%20becomes%20energy