Fusión nuclear

Solamente hay mecanismo conocido para la generación de energía del Sol, tal que tengan esa enorme salida de energía.

Only one known energy-generation mechanism can conceivably account for the Sun’s enormous energy output. That process is nuclear fusion—the combining of light nuclei into heavier ones. We can represent a typical fusion reaction symbolically as

nucleus 1 + nucleus 2 nucleus 3 + energy.

For powering the Sun, the most important piece of this equation is the energy produced.

The essential point here is that, during a fusion reaction, the total mass decreases—the mass of nucleus 3 is less than the combined masses of nuclei 1 and 2. Where does this mass go? It is converted to energy in accordance with Einstein’s famous equation E = mc2. In words, this equation says that, to determine the amount of energy corresponding to a given mass, simply multiply the mass by the square of the speed of light (c in the equation). The speed of light is so large that even a small amount of mass translates into an enormous amount of energy.

The production of energy by a nuclear fusion reaction is an example of the law of conservation of mass and energy, which states that the sum of mass and energy (properly converted to the same units, using Einstein’s equation) must always remain constant in any physical process. There are no known exceptions.