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Asked by to Aimee, Chris, Dave, Greig, Laurence on 17 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
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Dave Jones answered on 17 Jun 2014:
We already do! All the energy on Earth, one way or another, came from the Sun. Oill, for example, comes from years of compressing biological material (dead plants and animals) under heat and pressure. Those plants and animals only grew because of light from the Sun, and the heat that they were exposed to was because of the Sun heating the Earth. So, because all our fuels come from the Sun, we are already using star fuel to power our cars as well as everything else!
Sometimes we use the energy of our star, the Sun, even more directly by making solar powered vehicles. These use solar panels to convert the light from the Sun into the energy we need to fuel our cars.
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Greig Cowan answered on 17 Jun 2014:
Good question. The fuel of stars is hydrogen, the simplest element in the Universe (1 electron orbiting 1 proton). Through the process of nuclear fusion, the hydrogen is fused together to make heavier and heavier elements (such as helium, lithium, oxygen…) and this process releases huge amounts of energy, making stars hot. It is currently not possible for us to reproduce nuclear fusion in the laboratory due to the large energies and temperatures involved to sustain the reaction. Scientists have been trying to do this for many years and I actually have a colleague working on this very subject at a facility at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxfordshire. There is also a new facility being constructed in the south of France that should come online in the next few years. It is hoped that this is the first place that we will be able to sustain and control a fusion reaction in the laboratory. However, I think it will be a long time before we see this energy source being used in cars!
However, hydrogen is already being used in a different way to power cars. Rather than using fusion, we can combine the hydrogen with oxygen (from the air) to produce water (H2O) and a lot of electrical energy. This energy can be used to power the car. So, although we can’t reproduce the fusion of a star, we can still use the fuel of a star (the hydrogen) to power cars and other mechanical devices.
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Aimee Hopper answered on 17 Jun 2014:
stars are fuelled by hydrogen, and hydrogen cars already exist 🙂
I think the reason they aren’t more mainstream is people are worried about the cars exploding, as hydrogen is VERY reactive!
So yes, you can use star fuel to power a car 🙂
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Laurence Perreault Levasseur answered on 18 Jun 2014:
yes! absolutely! Like the others said, the stars are powered by hydrogen fusion, so star fuel is hydrogen, and there are many ways to use it to power cars! You should check out my answer to the car factory question: /energyj14-zone/2014/06/16/could-you-use-hydrogen-to-make-energy-to-power-something-such-as-a-car-factory/
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