I think I should clear this up: the sun is 70% hydrogen, 28% helium, 1.5% carbon, nitrogen and oxygen, the rest being all other elements untill iron. It most-likely does contain havier elements than iron, but only in non-significant quanteties. "fire" is when a molecule has a chemical reaction with oxygen or an oxide ion (an oxygen atom with one extra electron). I think most of you will have had chemestry, and understand, but, to be sure: A chemical reaction is when atoms that a aranged in one way get aranged in another way. for example, burning methane: Methane is one Carbon atom grouped together with four hydogen atoms, oxygen gas is two oxygen atoms grouped together. When you burn it the methane reacts with two oxygen molecules, so the methane and oxygen rearages to one carbon atom connected to two oxygen atoms and two groups of one oxygen atoms grouped with two hydrogen atoms. Written down more proffesionally: CH4 + 2 O2 => CO2 + 2 H2O What happens in the sun is not a chemical reaction. It's nucliar fusion. Nucliar fusion is when two atoms merge and form one atom. That is possible because an atom is also made out of tiny parts: protons, neutron (which, in turn, are made out of quarks) and electrons. Hydrogen genually has one electron and one proton, helium is two protons, two electrons and two neutrons. following this process six hydrogen can fuse to become one helium and two hydrogen. By this proccess, some mass is lost. people who have studied a bit of chemestry will know that mass tends to be preserved, so, where did it go? Well, remember Einstein and his E=MC2? That's of use here. The formula basically says that one unit of mass can converge to C2 units of energy. C2 is a really big number, so one tiny bit of mass converges to one giant amount of energy. (When you go and do phisycs at universety, you'll learn it doesn't converge, but mass actually is a form of energy, but oh well...) This also kind of is what nucliar reacors do, they only split atoms instead of merging them. Genually speaking, when something is hot enough for nucliar fusion to start, chemical reactions don't happen anymore, because the atoms aren't grouped at all. The energy of the sun comes from the E = Mc2 mass-energy conversion that happens when fusing together atoms (not only hydrogen and helium) Not fire or any other form of chemical reaction ----------------- I also see some stuff on what plasma is: plasma is another state of matter, just like gas, fluid or solid. It basically is when a gas gets even hotter: a solid is when the atoms in matter are close to eachother: they cannot move relative to eachother: a gass (skipping fluid for reasons) is when the atoms can more relative to eachother, a plasma is when the particles the atoms are made of can more relative to eachother. I honestly don't know enough about it to give a lecture about thsi too, but it's basically just the forth state of matter. Asking if plasma is fiery is just as meaningfull as asking if fluid is fiery. There is no such thing as "fluid" or "plasma" as an alone-standing object, and something that is it can both by fiery and not, it does not matter.
