• Question: what gases and how many are in the sun?

    Asked by 322gdna29 to Arthur, Clare, Daniel, David, Tora on 17 Nov 2014.
    • Photo: David Wilson

      David Wilson answered on 17 Nov 2014:

      To be picky, it isn’t gas but plasma (the next phase of matter beyond gas). The Sun is mostly hydrogen (71%) and helium (27%), with a small amount of iron, carbon and oxygen, as well as tiny amounts of most of the other elements.

    • Photo: Clare Harding

      Clare Harding answered on 17 Nov 2014:

      Although the sun and most stars are like David said, I have just found out that you can get chemically peculiar stars (which is going to be the name of my prog rock band).

      These have unusual concentrations of certain elements and can be hotter or spin slower than stars like ours.

      I think it is amazing that we can tell for sure that a star millions of light years away has slightly more manganese in its core when it is such a tiny part of the star!

    • Photo: Daniel Parsons

      Daniel Parsons answered on 17 Nov 2014:

      Hi there,
      Most of the sun is composed of hydrogen (about 72%). Nuclear fusion converts this hydrogen into mostly Helium. The sun is also composed of about 26 percent Helium…so 99.9% of the sun is made of these two elements….but there are trace amounts of other elements such as oxygen, carbon, neon, nitrogen, magnesium, iron and silicon. These heavier elements tend to be in the centre of the sun in its core. See this website for more information on this and a host of other things too: http://www.space.com/17170-what-is-the-sun-made-of.html

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