How Sun Produces Light and Heat?

Write an essay of 1500 words on how the sun produces light and heat. Please include credible references and follow the APA style.

What is Sun?

The Sun is a gigantic cosmic body which is many times greater than our Earth. Scientists have called it as a huge nuclear reactor which burns numerous amounts of hydrogen which is its basic fuel in fusion reactions. This hydrogen in fusion reactions combine to form the helium, beryllium and lithium atoms. The temperature on the surface of the Sun is approximately 6000 ºC while that at its core is about a million ºC. Sun is also a gigantic star just like all other stars in our galaxy but the only difference is that the distance of sun from our Earth is eight light minutes while other stars are many light years away. Thus, sun is thousands of times closer to our Earth than other stars, situated in the region called the Goldilocks zone which is assumed to be neither too hot nor too cold to sustain life. Sun provides us with sufficient heat and light energy to neither burn us to cinders not to leave us frozen. The body of sun is not a solid structure but it’s a mixture of gases held together by immense gravitational and magnetic forces. Its different parts rotate at different rates like at the equator, it spins once in about 25 days and at its poles it rotates once on its axis in every 36 earth days (Solarsystem.nasa.gov, 2013).

Nuclear Fusion Reactions on Sun:

Nuclear fusion is a process in which two or more nuclei of atoms combine to form a third element which have a higher atomic number than the atoms which started the process. Fusion is the process which is the reverse of nuclear fission, in which one atom of higher atomic number undergo fission to produce two atoms of lower atomic numbers. In our solar system the Sun and all other stars are powered by the nuclear fusion reactions. In this process, which is the source of all the energy emitted by the sun, two main steps takes place which are:

1. The conversion of...