The sun is a big ball of gas and plasma. Most of the gas — 91 percent — is hydrogen. It is converted into energy in the sun’s core. The energy moves outward through the interior layers, into the sun’s atmosphere, and is released into the solar system as heat and light.

The three states of matter are the three distinct physical forms that matter can take in most environments: solid, liquid, and gas. In extreme environments, other states may be present, such as plasma, Bose-Einstein condensates, and neutron stars.

Plasma is different: it’s gas with its atoms’ electrons stripped off and free to flow. In other words, it requires temperatures far higher than fire to produce the “hard” ultraviolet light and the electrical effects seen in plasmas. Your flame can’t just be white hot or blue-hot, it must be UV-hot.

Answer: Well, in fact the hydrogen and helium in the Sun are neither in gas nor liquid form. Due to the extremely high pressures and temperatures found in the Sun hydrogen and helium are in a *plasma* state. A plasma is closer to a gas than a liquid, but technically a gas and a plasma are different states of matter.

It’s Definitely Possible! As it turns out, we can have an artificial sun on Earth, but as you might expect, creating an artificial sun takes a bit more than conducting a small experiment with regular equipment in a typical laboratory.

A constant fusion fire burns in its core, where the hydrogen atomic nuclei merge into helium. The enormous energy produced in this nuclear fusion is what heats and lights the earth. The goal of fusion research is to derive energy from fusion of atomic nuclei. Fusion fuels are cheap and uniformly distributed on earth.

The sun does not run out of oxygen for the simple fact that it does not use oxygen to burn. The burning of the sun is not chemical combustion. It is nuclear fusion. At the same time, hydrogen atoms in the fuel bond with oxygen atoms to make water molecules.

The Sun does not “burn”, like we think of logs in a fire or paper burning. The Sun glows because it is a very big ball of gas, and a process called nuclear fusion is taking place in its core.

A fire cannot burn without oxygen. It should be noted that in the presence of carbon, nitrogen and oxygen, stars heavier than the Sun may burn hydrogen to helium by using the C, N and O as catalysts. Even in these stars, however, an absence of oxygen does not prevent nuclear burning.

The Sun as a red giant will then… go supernova? Actually, no—it doesn’t have enough mass to explode. Instead, it will lose its outer layers and condense into a white dwarf star about the same size as our planet is now. A planetary nebula is the glowing gas around a dying, Sun-like star.

Fires can’t start in space itself because there is no oxygen – or indeed anything else – in a vacuum. Yet inside the confines of spacecraft, and freed from gravity, flames behave in strange and beautiful ways. They burn at cooler temperatures, in unfamiliar shapes and are powered by unusual chemistry.

In space, of course, you can’t have any fires because there isn’t any oxidizer (i.e. oxygen) to sustain the combustion process. In space, of course, you can’t have any fires because there isn’t any oxidizer (i.e. oxygen) to sustain the combustion process.

In low gravity situations, there is no buoyancy from flames. Convection, the movement of air, is an important way that heat is transferred to other spaces. Without air, fires don’t spread as rapidly. The flame’s unusual shape creates different amounts of soot, smoke or harmful gases.

“The fuel and oxidizer in a match head would cause the tip to burn, but not for long because of lack of oxygen.” And in the moon’s complete lack of atmosphere, a match cannot ignite at all — explanation enough for why Neil Armstrong didn’t celebrate his step onto the lunar surface with a candlelight dinner.

Wood would not rot in space. Any water in the wood would flash boil, and the wood would be left bone dry and husk like, if it was even still in one piece. With no water or air, even bacteria that might have been able to live off of just the wood will quickly lose a lot of their ability to metabolize.