this post was submitted on 19 Sep 2024
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[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

Okay, very confusing question...

So, assuming you want to know how heavy only the "solid at room temperature" elements of the sun are, let's try this.

The sun is 1.989 × 10^30 kilograms.

According to this: https://www.thoughtco.com/element-composition-of-sun-607581 we can see the % of total mass for each element.

  • Element % of total atoms % of total mass
  • Hydrogen 91.2 71.0
  • Helium 8.7 27.1
  • Oxygen 0.078 0.97
  • Carbon 0.043 0.40
  • Nitrogen 0.0088 0.096
  • Silicon 0.0045 0.099
  • Magnesium 0.0038 0.076
  • Neon 0.0035 0.058
  • Iron 0.030 0.014
  • Sulfur 0.015 0.040

Doing the math and removing the "gas at room temperature" elements... the total mass would be:

1.7901 * 10^28 kilograms

Note: Pretty sure I've messed something up here in the calculations but the mass is so ridiculously heavy that I don't think it really matters.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Seems like you answered the question, OP comments at the bottom and thinks it might be picked up by hand in terms of weight.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 month ago

Not many rocks don't have some oxygen atoms in them, so I chose to include all the astronomical "metals" in my estimate. Interesting to see how little difference it makes.