Redpill a brainlet on fusion reactors.

>>8730433
Ok. So, stars have two competing forces going on inside them. First they have gravity. Stars, like our sun are MASSIVE. Way way more massive than you realize. The sun loses about a MILLION TONS of matter into space EVERY SECOND. Every single second for the last 4.6 billion years the sun has lost a million tons of matter into space. It will keep losing a million tons of matter into space every second for the next 4-5 billion years when it finally exhausts its fuel and burns out. When that finally happens it will have lost about 1% of it's total mass.

I hope that helps you realize how fucking insanely HUGE the sun is.

Enough with the caps lock. So the sun is huge. All that gravity is squeezing the everliving fuck out of the core of the sun. There's so much pressure at the core of the sun that atoms of hydrogen sometimes get forced together and form helium. It gives off a tiny tiny tiny tiny amount of energy but it happens a lot. So much that the sun gives off about 3.8 x 10^26 watts per second.

That is the second force I mentioned earlier. All that energy is pushing the sun outward. If the Earth was moved close enough to the sun all that energy would literally vaporize it. That energy pushing out counters the force of gravity pushing in and the sun is in equilibrium. That happens in all stars but at different rates depending on size

>>8730476
So in the sun nuclear fusion only happens in the core and only to a smaĺl amount of H?

Where does all that wasted matter go? Into solar flares?

So, to your question. Can we fuse anything else? Certainly Fusion can happen on any element. Fusion happens in stars from hydrogen to iron (once a star fuses iron it explodes). Our star is too small to ever fuse iron. It'll die long before then because it doesn't have the mass it needs to create enough gravity to fuse iron. Only the very very biggest stars ever reach iron fusion, and then they explode.

Here on Earth of course we can fuse just about anything. We just have to mimic that insane, crazy, holy shit are you kidding me, pressure that exists at the heart of stars. We can do that with explosives. For instance Little Boy was made by blasting a slug of uranium at another piece of uranium faster than a bullet in order to create the pressure needed to fuse uranium and start a chain reaction that resulted in blowing up a small piece of Japan.

The problem is
1. If you put in less energy than you expect out it's uncontrolled. It just fucking blows the hell out of shit
2. If you control it you have to add insane, crazy, holy shit are you kidding me, pressure that exists at the heart of stars which takes far more energy in than you get out.

>>8730483
What wasted matter do you speak of?

>>8730483
Compared to the total amount of Hydrogen yes, only a tiny fraction of the sun's total hydrogen is consumed.

Where does it go?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_wind

>>8730495
Oh I was so close.

http://solar-center.stanford.edu/FAQ/Qshrink.html

well, that's how much mass the sun loses which is converted to light. I may still be right in mass lost to solar wind. I'm uncertain. It's been a few years since astrophysics.

>>8730495
Does that mean that solar arks(prominences or whatever you call them) are potentially lost matter that returned back to the sun?