Why is there air on earth but not in space?

Answer 1

The Sun is not "on fire" in the way that we think of as "fire" here on Earth, in the sense of wood or coal burning in an oxygen atmosphere.

The Sun "burns" with a nuclear reaction, in which hydrogen nuclei fuse into helium nuclei, releasing energy. This reaction takes place at the core of the Sun, at temperatures of 15 million degrees. We can, for just an instant, recreate this process here on Earth; we call it a "hydrogen bomb".

Answer 2

The sun doesn't 'burn', and it doesn't need any oxygen to do what it's doing, or to

generate the energy that it's producing.

I once read about a calculation that somebody did, where they figured out how long the

sun would last if it was completely made out of coal, and the coal burned fast enough to

produce the amount of energy that the sun actually produces. The answer was: Less than

30 years.

The sun ... and every star you see in the sky ... produces its energy by the process of

nuclear fusion down in its core. Without trying to go into detail about that, we'll just

mention that it's the same process that generates the energy in the 'hydrogen bomb'.
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Stars do not burn like a fire, they produce their heat by a process called nuclear fusion where hydrogen is converted into helium (like in a hydrogen bomb).

Therefore no oxygen is needed by a star.

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The sun produces energy through a Nuclear Fusion reaction. It does not burn. The energy that the sun produces comes from the fusion of hydrogen to create helium and energy. There is no oxygen necessary. It is not combustion nor any chemical reaction. It is a nuclear reaction.

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The straightforward answer:

The sun doesn't burn, like regular fire. Normal fire is a process called combustion, it's actually a very vigorous chemical reaction which requires oxygen.

The sun, however, is essentially a controlled nuclear explosion, through a process called fusion. Due to the intense mass of the sun, it also has a very strong gravity -- this forces the hydrogen atoms in the sun to become much closer than normal, and in some cases fusing together to form larger atoms. This fusion reaction releases enormous amounts of energy.

There's a decent article with technical details at HowStuffWorks. http://science.howstuffworks.com/sun2.htm

The sun is generating heat and light from the fusionprocess (converting hydrogen to helium). This is not the same as "burning" in the usual (chemistry) sense of the word.

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The force of Gravity is responsible for the shining stars. Incredible pressures created in the cores, crush atoms together (Fusion) releasing huge amounts of energy.

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Stars are not technically "burning" but are undergoing Nuclear Fusion. This is the process of forming a larger element from two or more separate smaller elements. In the case of our Sun, the simplest form of Fusion is occurring, as hydrogen atoms are combining to create helium.

In a fusion reaction, the combined mass of the two hydrogen atoms does not equal the resulting mass of the created helium atom. This "missing mass" or mass deficit has been released as energy, this is why the Sun is bright and hot. Millions of fusion reactions are taking place simultaneously, releasing energy that can be described with the infamous equation; E=mc2 where Eis the energy released and m is the mass deficit.

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Answer 3

The Sun is only visible when it has something to illuminate, and outer space is a practical vacuum: no dust, molecules, or water vapor to reflect the light to our eyes. On Earth, these molecules bend and refract the light during the day, giving us a transparent blue sky. On the Moon, or on Mars, the sky is black, dotted with the light from innumerable stars, galaxies, and nebulae.

Answer 4

Because sun emits invisible perticles. Those perticles reacts only if they hit some solid object.. like our atmosphere. Therefore if you are in outer space (far from ionosphere) you wouldnt see anything. And yes, i cannot confirm it - have never been in outer space :).

Answer 5

Space appears to be mostly devoid of not only oxygen but most other things as well. That is really because of two things. One, things stick together on the large scale. People live in communities, planets live in solar systems, bees in hives, solar systems in galaxies, protons live with neutrons in tightly knit nuclei and so on. This in some cases can be explained by psychosocial issues when speaking of living organisms, the strong nuclear force when speaking of protons and neutrons and gravity when speaking of stars and planets. There may be an even broader force that would explain all these phenomena more accurately but I digress.

The reason why space lacks much oxygen is because massive bodies such as stars and planets attract mostly all of it. There are some special circumstances that would cause planets to lose their oxygen and then space would then have some...but not for long, a massive object would then attract it.

Also When stars explode they emit all kinds of elements, oxygen included, so space does have some oxygen in it.

Finally as a consequence of the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle there are these things called virtual particles. These particles pop in and out of existence from the quantum vacuum and disappear just as quickly. There presence has been detected experimentally. So even "empty space" isn't empty after all. It has virtual particles appearing and disappearing all the time. Normally these particles are subatomic and not molecular, but there is nothing stopping macro particles from appearing and disappearing from whence they came.

Answer 6

There is oxygen in space, it just isn't pressurized with the gravity of the Earth (or of any other planet) to where we can breathe it (the molecules have to be close together and on the Earth it is mixed mostly with nitrogen). Space stations are air-tight (and pressurized) with air circulation to keep pockets of carbon dioxide from forming around astronaut's mouths. This isn't a problem when a planet is involved, gravity pressurizes the air, and wind from uneven solar heating creates wind which moves the air.

Answer 7

technically its not staying in one place, it is moving with our milky way galaxy, which is only moving due to the super massive black hole in the center

The sun (and the whole of the solar system) orbits the centre of the Milky Way along with all the other stars in the galaxy, and moves with the galaxy along with all other galaxies, which are all moving away from each other at accelerating velocity. Black holes have nothing to do with this motion.

Answer 8

You can. The difference is that on Earth the sunlight reflects off of the objects around us (including molecules in the air, which causes the sky to be blue). In space there is nothing for the sunlight to reflect off of.

Answer 9

If you mean "why is it hard to live in space over a long period of time" in a biome (spacestation) of some sort then:

1. You need to be able to recycle 100% of the waste products that are produced.
2. You need to have enough plants to be able to recycle all of the carbon dioxide and give out enough oxygen for survival.
3. There needs to be a relitively indistructible dome coving you at all times with enough pressure to mimic Earth's surface pressure.

If i think of more I'll come back and type them in.

Answer 10

There is no oxygen in space, the only foreign substance your likely to come across are gamma rays from the sun, or foreign planets. If in bare space, the side of your body pointing towards the sun will melt, and the part pointing away, would freeze at -1000 degrees F. Which would be a most unpleasant death. But hey, look on the plus side, nothing survives in space...not even bacteria, so your body would never decompose =P

Michael W.