Where do the stars get the Oxygen to burn?
This was selected as Best Answer As the article above states, the Sun does not actually “burn” in the sense of combustion (where oxygen combines with other elements, releasing energy in the process). At the center of Sun, and other stars, deuterium and tritium, which are variants (isotopes) of hydrogen, are smashed together under tremendous pressure. This process (fusion) produces helium atoms and energy in the form of photons (light). The photons are in the gamma-ray part of the spectrum. In other words, it is not the heat and light that we experience on a sunny day. As the photons travel from the center of the Sun to the surface they run into other atoms, which absorb them and re-emit them at a lower wavelength. By the time the photons reach the surface, a significant portion of them are in the visible light and infrared (heat) parts of the spectrum. Most of the matter in the universe is hydrogen–it’s a very simple element–and most stars are made of hydrogen and helium. Oxygen is a
