A spacecraft called IRIS (Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph) studies the suns atmosphere. Material that travels through the atmosphere, known as the solar chromosphere, heats up from about 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit (5,500 degrees Celsius) at the sun's surface to temperatures as high as 3.5 million degrees Fahrenheit (2 million degrees celsius) farther out.

The ultraviolet telescope studies "how solar material moves, gathers energy and heats up" in the chromosphere on its way to the outer atmosphere, the corona. The Sun is almost perfectly spherical and exists as a large ball of hydrogen. The hydrogen has become so compressed by gravitational forces that 620 million metric tons of hydrogen fuse into helium each second. The task of IRIS is not to study the interior, but to make sense of the layers of hydrogen on the outer edge of the sun.

The ionization energy needed to remove an electron from a neutral hydrogen atom is 13.6 eVolts. The Bohr radius of hydrogen has a value of 52.9 picometers (10^-11 meters). The force holding a single electron to a single proton never grows higher then the value calculated with coulombs law at this distance. This value can be also computed in terms of other physical constants including the permittivity of free space, the speed of light in vacuum and other constants found in nature. At this distance, it takes 13.6 eVolts of energy to knock this electron away from the proton and it never takes more then 13.6 eVolts of energy to ionize hydrogen no matter how close the electron is to the proton.

To properly model this, we use Newton's Shell theorem as support, and say that electrons do not feel an attraction to the proton once inside the proton shell. Imagine. as many chemistry drawings show, a hydrogen proton as a large gray shell and the electron as a small red dot.

Electrons and protons are attracted inversely proportional to the squared distance between them if the electron is outside the proton shell of 53pm. Electrons feel no force from the proton while inside the proton shell. Bonding between hydrogen protons happens as one electron, trapped in a proton of one hydrogen, gets trapped in a proton of another hydrogen, binding the two hydrogens together.

A proton and an electron combination (hydrogen) is neutral in charge. Although neutral, the proton acting as a shell of charge with the electron close to the edge of the shell, will attract other neutral hydrogen atoms until one electron (or perhaps 2 in the ortho form) is trapped in both hydrogen shells binding them together.

The neutron is a shell in the same manner as the proton, but without the electric charge (white shell in figure). Protons and neutrons are allowed to flow through each other, but when the shells are very close, they feel the effect of the strong force. The strong force is a binding force that merges shells together if they are forced to be very close to each other. A proton and neutron shell is less then one femtometer thick while its size is thousands of times larger at over 52 picometers. Elements are modelled as proton and neutron shells, stacked on each other, binding together, with the neutrons acting as an insulators between proton shells. On heavier elements, extra neutron shells between some of the layers provide a more stable element.

Hydrogen Energy Levels

The energy level the electron is in, depends on the vibration pattern of the proton shell it is bonded to. In a low density environment, most of the protons in a hydrogen gas will stablize their vibration pattern and the electron will fall to the lowest energy level. In a higher density electron gas, the proton shells are much less stable and electrons jump around from one higher energy level to another high energy level due to the variance of the proton shell vibration pattern. In fact, if packed tight enough, the proton shells start to overlap and the electrons become more energenic and less stable on a particular level. Electrons are more likely to emit photons due to a jump from higher energy levels like 8 or 9 when protons are more closely packed together.

Modelling the heat of hydrogen

As hydrogen gas is compressed the freedom of motion is significantly impaired. At very high pressures, the hydrogen gas forms a liquid and the motion of the protons undergoes a phase transition. The motion evolves from being relatively independent of other molecules except for the case of collisions, into an ordered state where a molecule no longer flies around randomly but now is so constrained by the other molecules and is only able to "vibrate in place". As in any other material, the temperature that a gas can obtain, greatly exceeds the temperature a liquid or solid of that same material can reach due to the constraint in motion of the individual molecules.

The Sun

Falling deeper into the sun, the density rises eventually to 1.6×10^5 kg/m³. The movement of protons and electrons are so severely restricted that electrons bind with protons forming neutrons. This process is a reverse beta-decay. In reverse beta-decay, electrons forced so close to a pole of the proton, that through a w-particle, turn a proton into a neutron. Continued pressure eventully causes "layers" of proton and neutrons shells to bind and become Helium, releasing enormous energy.