Can You Extinguish the Sun?
Unlike a campfire, which burns using a process called chemical combustion, the Sun generates energy through a process called nuclear fusion. Much to the chagrin of any pyrophiliacs out there, this means that the Sun is not actually on fire. As a result, it would be an insurmountable challenge to attempt to extinguish the Sun with a bucket of water.
Through nuclear fusion, the Sun produces energy in its core, which is then released in the forms of light and heat. The core of the Sun has such extreme pressure and temperature that individual atoms of hydrogen are forced together to create helium atoms. This process of fusion releases energy, which then rises through the outer layers of the Sun and eventually reaches space.
But let’s imagine that you have infinite resources and you manage to build a bucket the size of the Sun and fill it with water. This is no small feat since this bucket would have to have a diameter roughly 109 times that of Earth and you would also have to transport it 93 million miles to get it from Earth to the Sun. All of the water inside of the bucket would evaporate as soon as you get even remotely close to the Sun.
“Water is hydrogen and oxygen,” Dr. Judith Karpen, Chief of the Space Weather Laboratory at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center said. “If you get to the temperatures of the Sun, even at the lowest temperature on the Sun, the water is going to disassociate. You’ll have hydrogen and you’ll have oxygen, but it will no longer be something that can quench a fire.”
Ultimately, trying to extinguish the Sun with a bucket of water will appear to cause the opposite reaction. When the water dissipates into hydrogen and oxygen atoms, the hydrogen atoms become fuel for the Sun. Likewise, the added mass of this additional hydrogen will cause the pressure of the gravity crushing the Sun together to increase as well. The combination of these factors would cause the Sun to experience more nuclear fusion, create more energy and appear brighter.
While the Sun may be burning brighter and larger, this also means that it is producing energy at a higher rate. When the Sun eventually runs out of hydrogen to fuel itself, it will begin to burn through heavier elements in a violent and extreme reaction. The Sun will grow rapidly in size until it is a red giant star. Sometime after that, it will shrink down to about the size of the Earth and become a white dwarf star. Since the bucket of water will add more hydrogen, the act of trying to extinguish the Sun will cause it to burn at a slightly quicker rate and briefly shorten its lifespan. However, you would be long gone before you ever had the chance to witness the effects.
Editor’s Note: Vicky Woodburn is an intern at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC). The research and interviews for this article were collected for a class while she was a student and prior to her employment with NASA GSFC. All views and opinions presented in this article belong to the author alone, and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any agency of the U.S. government or any institution to which the author is or was affiliated.
