如果燃烧需要氧气，那么太空中没有氧气，太阳从哪里得到氧气？_风闻

【来源龙腾网】

评论原创翻译：

Carey Sublette

Lots of correct answers here.But I am taking a different approach, and considering the history of trying to answer this question which was not satisfactorily answered until 1938.

这里有很多正确答案。但是我采取了一种不同的方法，并且考虑到试图回答这个问题的历史，这个问题直到1938年才得到令人满意的答案。 0

Early in the Nineteenth Century the most widely accepted answer was that a chemical reaction drove the Sun’s energy output. Knowing the mass of the Sun, and using the most energetic chemical reactions known, it was estimated that the Sun could only burn for about 5000 years. At that time the Earth was thought to be several thousand years old, so this was not thought a problem.

在十九世纪早期，最广为接受的答案是，一种化学反应驱动了太阳的能量输出。了解了太阳的质量，并利用已知的最高能量的化学反应，估计太阳只能燃烧5000年左右。当时人们认为地球有几千年的历史，所以这不是一个问题。 0

But since the late 1700s geologists had been finding evidence from sedimentary deposits, and the study of sedimentation, that the Earth was much older than that, millions of years, tens of millions, hundreds of millions.

但是从18世纪晚期开始，地质学家们就开始从沉积物中，和沉积物的研究中发现证据，证明地球的历史远远超过那个年代，数百万年，数千万年，数亿年。 0

In 1862 William Thomson (Lord Kelvin after 1892) provided a new explanation for the Sun’s heat: gravitational contraction. At the current rate of solar output, and the upper limit of its “starting radius” (the orbit of the Earth), he came up with a figure of 20 million years for its age.

1862年，威廉 · 汤姆森(1892年之后的开尔文勋爵)为太阳的热量提供了一个新的解释: 引力收缩。按照目前太阳的发射速率和“起始半径”(地球的轨道)的上限，他得出了2000万年的年龄。 0

This was compatible with the youngest ages being considered by geologists, and also his own estimate about the age of the Earth based on the time it would take a molten sphere to form its current crust. Thomson’s “age of the Earth” estimate was wildly wrong though because he did not take into account convection inside the core and mantle (also he did not know about radioactive heating, which is an additional factor that also undercuts his model, but this not why his answer was fundamentally wrong - it was wrong even by the physics of the day).

这与地质学家所考虑的最年轻的年龄是一致的，也与他自己根据熔化的球体形成现在的地壳所需的时间对地球年龄的估计是一致的。汤姆森对“地球年龄”的估计是大错特错的，因为他没有考虑到地核和地幔内部的对流(他也不知道放射性加热，这是一个额外的因素，也削弱了他的模型，但这不是为什么他的答案从根本上是错误的——甚至从当时的物理学角度来看也是错误的)。 0

But the evidence that the Earth was much older than 20 million years kept piling up (a little sedimentation joke). Nothing under some hundreds of millions of years looked plausible, which left the source of energy from the Sun a complete mystery.

但是地球比2000万年前古老得多的证据不断积累。在几亿年的时间里，没有什么东西看起来是可信的，这使得太阳的能量来源完全成为一个谜。 0

The discovery of radioactivity in 1896 provided an explanation of sorts. Here we had evidence of a mysterious source energy in the atom (or some atoms) which was about a million times larger than chemical energy. This suggested some process akin to radioactive decay was the source of the energy, but no one could say what that process was.

1896年放射性的发现提供了各种各样的解释。在这里，我们有证据表明原子(或一些原子)中有一种神秘的能量来源，它比化学能大一百万倍。这表明某种类似于放射性的过程是能量的来源，但是没有人能说出这个过程是什么。 0

Radioactivity also permitted new types of rock dating, and it was soon discovered that the Earth must be billions of years old.

放射性还允许新类型的岩石年代被测定，很快人们发现地球一定有几十亿年的历史了。 0

In 1920 Sir Arthur Eddington, in his short journal article “The Internal Constitution of Stars” using the nuclide masses recently measured, posited that a process of hydrogen fusion to form helium (itself not found on Earth until 1895) explained the energy output since combining four hydrogen atoms to form a helium atom would release a very large amount of energy from the missing excess mass, and it was known from spectroscopy that the major elements in the Sun were hydrogen and helium. But the actual nuclear reactions by which this might happen were unknown.

1920年，亚瑟·爱丁顿爵士在他的简短的期刊文章《恒星的内部构造》中，使用最近测量的核素质量，假定氢聚变形成氦的过程(在地球上直到1895年才发现)解释了能量输出，因为将4个氢原子结合形成一个氦原子会从失去的超量中释放出非常大的能量，而且从光谱学中知道太阳中的主要元素是氢和氦。但是实际发生的核反应是未知的。 0

Eddington expanded on this initial insight into his 416 page treatise, also called “The Internal Constitution of Stars” published in 1926. In this remarkable work he derives the structure of stars without knowing the reaction that powered them.

爱丁顿将这个最初的见解扩展到他的416页的论文，也被称为“星星的内部构成” ，出版于1926年。在这项非凡的工作中，他在不知道驱动它们的反应的情况下，就得出了恒星的结构。 0

Two comments Eddington makes in the books well observed:“We should say that the assemblage of 4 hydrogen nuclei and 2 electrons to form the helium atom was impossible if we did not know that it had occurred.”“We may also await developments of the new quantum mechanics of Heisenberg.”

艾丁顿在书中做了两个评论:“我们应该说，如果我们不知道氦原子的形成过程，4个氢原子核和2个电子的集合是不可能的。”“我们也可能等待海森堡新量子力学的发展。” 0

It was not until 1937–1938 when Hans Bethe did his Nobel Prize winning work using that “new quantum mechanics”, which worked out the steps of the solar fusion process in two papers. The first detailed the proton-proton chain reaction that provides 16.68% of the Sun’s power. And the second described the main source of solar energy - the CNO (Carbon-Nitrogen-Oxygen) Cycle which provides 83.32% of the Sun’s power.

直到1937年至1938年，Hans Bethe才使用“新量子力学”完成了他的诺贝尔奖获得者的工作，他在两篇论文中提出了太阳聚变过程的步骤。第一篇详细描述了质子-质子链式反应，它提供了太阳16.68% 的能量。第二个描述了太阳能的主要来源—— CNO (碳-氮-氧)循环，它提供了太阳83.32% 的能量。