Answer 1:
That’s a really interesting question! I have
never really thought about water in the sun
before! My intuition tells me that the sun is
so hot that it will split any water molecules
apart. Water is made of two hydrogen atoms and
one oxygen atom that are bound together. At high
temperatures (100°C at sea level), liquid water
turns into water vapor. At very high temperatures
(thousands of degrees Celsius), many of the water
molecules in a vapor will split apart into atomic
ions (individual hydrogen and oxygen atoms that
have an electrical charge). At the temperature of
the surface of the sun (~5,500°C), most of the
water will be split into individual ions. However,
when researching your question, I learned that
there is water in some areas near the surface
of the sun! The water vapor only exists near
sunspots, where the temperature is abnormally low
(Wallace et al., 1995). On earth, when water
evaporates, it rises up in the atmosphere if the
parcel of air that it is in is warmer and less
dense than the surrounding air. I don’t know this
for sure, but I assume that there is extremely
high turbidity (swirling around of the cloud of
ions) at the surface of the sun, and so I think
any water vapor probably gets swirled around too.
However, the strength of the sun’s gravity is so
great that the water molecules probably can’t
escape into space.
References
Wallace, L., Bernath, P., Livingston, W., Hinkle,
K., Busler, J., Guo, B., & Zhang, K. (1995). Water
on the sun. SCIENCE-NEW YORK THEN WASHINGTON-,
1155-1155. Click Here to return to the search form.
|