Quote (card_sultan @ Jul 22 2016 01:07pm)
h2o = hydrogen and 2 parts oxygen - how does burning hydrogen at 15.7million kelvin degrees creates water - especially if the sun is theorized 71% hydrogen and 1% oxygen?
Because the sun isn't actually burning hydrogen in the sense of a chemical reaction with oxygen. The word "burning" is just a word, and people use it to describe all sorts of things. You might hear someone say that their ears are burning, but it doesn't mean they are literally on fire. Someone could be burning through their tasks, with no actual combustion involved. Money might be burning a hole in your pocket, but miraculously the pocket stays intact.
Just because somebody somewhere said that the sun is "burning" hydrogen doesn't mean anything from a scientific point of view. Words are constructs invented by us to describe the world we see, calling something a certain word doesn't actually change the nature of it. The nature of the sun is that it's fusing hydrogen into helium as the primary source of energy. Whether you call that "burning" or something else is irrelevant.
This post was edited by russian on Jul 22 2016 02:15pm