Sun Facts
Ahh, the Sun. We take it for granted in our busy lives. It rises and sets every day and is reliably "there" without effort or thought on our part. For us humans, and for 99.9% of all life that has ever existed on our planet, the sun is THE single most significant "thing" there is. We cannot overstate its value or begin to imagine life without it. The sun really does make the world go round.
The following page contains some Sun Facts. For useful information how you can harness its life-giving energy yourself, click here.
The following facts have been collected from various sources and can be widely checked on the Internet or by your friendly neighborhood scientist, or in a reference book at your local library;
• Size: The Sun is roughly 1.4 million kilometers (900,000 miles) across. For comparison, the Earth is about 13 thousand kilometers (8000 miles) wide. This means it would take more than 100 Earths to span the width of the Sun! About one million Earths would fit inside the Sun.
• Distance from the Earth: About 150 million km (93 million miles). This distance changes slightly over time because the Earth's orbit is not perfectly circular, but that is pretty close. Another way to describe the distance from the Sun to the Earth is "8 light-minutes" which means it take light about 8 minutes, traveling at 299,792,458 meters/second (about 186,000 miles/second) to reach Earth after it leaves the Sun.
• Mass: Lets start by saying the Sun is VERY heavy. It’s so heavy it’s hard to write the number out, so scientists use scientific notation. The Sun's mass is about 1.98892 × 1030 kilograms, or about 4.4x1030 lbs. That means there are 30 zeros after the first number. Of course we can't weigh the Sun directly, but the Sun's mass can be estimated using its gravitational effect on the planets and cross-checked by calculating its weight based on its composition. The Sun's density is up to 150,000 kg/m³ (150 times the density of water on Earth).
• Lifespan: Scientists estimate the Sun is about 4.5 billion years old. Although the Sun is consuming its hydrogen fuel at a rate of about 600 million metric tons each second, based on its mass the Sun will continue to shine at its present brightness for 5 to 6 billion MORE years.
• Composition: The Sun consists of hydrogen (about 74% of its mass, or 92% of its volume), helium (about 24% of mass, 7% of volume), and trace quantities of other elements, including iron, nickel, oxygen, silicon, sulfur, magnesium, carbon, neon, calcium, and chromium. The Sun's composition can be determined by looking at its elemental spectral emissions.
• Structure: the Sun is made of many different layers, each with its own characteristics and important functions. The Core in the middle is where the fusion takes place. A very dense Radiative Zone around the Core transmit electromagnetic radiation from the Core out to the outer layers, but because of its high density it may take hundreds of thousands to millions of years for the energy to escape to the surface. The Convective zone is a zone of churning plasma with rising areas of hotter material and sinking areas of cooling material that has released its energy. The Photosphere is effectively the surface layer of the Sun and it is the layer we actually see; providing light, heat and energy to our planet. The Sun technically extends beyond the Photosphere but the density of these areas, which include areas called the Chromosphere, the Transition region, the Corona, and the Heliosphere, drop very quickly and becomes akin to an atmosphere. Huge loops of magnetically convulsing plasma called Coronal Loops often link distant areas of the Sun. Other enormous events called Coronal Mass Ejections can spew radiation into space and cause significant damage to electronics on Earth over 93 million miles away.
• Formation: Current scientific theory holds the Sun is a "third generation" star that formed about 4.59 billion years ago during the rapid collapse of a molecular cloud. Scientists believe other stars must have been around our area of the galaxy before our Sun because the Sun contains heavy elements that must have been created by the explosion of older stars that are now long gone. It is believed that dust and gas in the molecular cloud gravitationally coalesced into a rotating disk that eventually became the Sun and all the contemporary planets and asteroids and comets that make up our solar system. As the gas in the middle of the disk further condensed it began to get hotter as more mass streamed into the center until eventually nuclear fusion began and the first life giving Sunlight began to stream from the Sun.
• Fuel: The Sun is a nuclear fusion furnace. It is so massive that Hydrogen atoms are squeezed together with enough force that they "fuse" and become the heavier element Helium. This releases tremendous energy and it is the result of this fusion reaction that we experience as light, and other effects of the Sun, here on Earth.
• Temperature: The Sun's temperature depends on where it is measured. The Sun Photosphere, the part we actually see and experience on a daily basis, is a about 5000-6000 degrees Centigrade. This is relatively cool considering the interior of the Sun is measured in the MILLIONS of degrees (between 10 and 15 million) depending on pressures and magnetic forces that fluctuate in the fusion reactions going on in the core. Interestingly, although the Sun generally gets cooler from the middle towards the surface, the layers above the surface, such as the Corona, are again measured in millions of degrees.
• Energy Output: The Sun is constantly emitting huge amounts of energy across a broad range of the electromagnetic spectrum. Like its mass, the Sun's total energy output is hard to put in numbers that are readily comprehendible. But put simply the Sun emits about 386 billion billion megawatts. After traveling the roughly 93 million miles to Earth the Sun's energy is still measured at about 1300-1400 watts/square meter. To get a sense for the amount of energy that represents, imagine a sphere around the Sun with a radius of about 93 million miles with more than a dozen 100 watt light bulbs occupying every roughly 3x3' section of the surface of the sphere. Not all the 1300-1400 watts/square meter gets to Earth however because our atmosphere absorbs and shields us from a significant part of the energy. Roughly speaking about 1000 watts/square meter hits the Earth when the Sun is directly over head. The number drops during the morning and evening as the energy travels through more of the atmosphere. Of course no energy falls directly on the part of Earth that is in night. But the atmosphere, land and water that are warmed up during the day slowly release their heat at night and contribute to remarkably stable day/night temperature swings usually measured in only 10's of degrees, and rarely more than 100 degrees.
(The text above was created by Stephen Honikman. Stephen and colleague Jeff Levy, recently developed an approach to enable Jewish organizations to power their facilities with solar energy, without the need for the organizations to expend any of their own capital. More information can be found at www.JFSI.org. You can contact Stephen at sch@jfsi.org.)
"Each day at noon, the sun makes its transit through the meridian; it is then always due south, and highest in the sky. The shadow of a vertical post or gnomon then points north and is shorter in length than at any other time. The time interval between two successive transits of the sun defines the apparent solar day." (from Mapping Time: the calendar and its history, by E.G. Edwards. Oxford University Press. p. 24)
The Sun provides Earth with as much energy every hour as human civilization uses every year. (Oliver Morton, Nature:international weekly journal of science)
Dr. Mark Jacobson of Stanford University compares the relative power of various solar and geo-based energy sources to show us the total global energy available per second:
The Sun: 31,000,000 GW (gigawatts)
Wind: 72,000 GW
Hydro: 6,000 GW
Wave: 5,000 GW
Tidal: 4,000 GW
Read about his important study here:
http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2009/january7/power-010709.html
http://www.eia.doe.gov/kids/energyfacts/sources/renewable/solar.html
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The following page contains some Sun Facts. For useful information how you can harness its life-giving energy yourself, click here.
The following facts have been collected from various sources and can be widely checked on the Internet or by your friendly neighborhood scientist, or in a reference book at your local library;
• Size: The Sun is roughly 1.4 million kilometers (900,000 miles) across. For comparison, the Earth is about 13 thousand kilometers (8000 miles) wide. This means it would take more than 100 Earths to span the width of the Sun! About one million Earths would fit inside the Sun.
• Distance from the Earth: About 150 million km (93 million miles). This distance changes slightly over time because the Earth's orbit is not perfectly circular, but that is pretty close. Another way to describe the distance from the Sun to the Earth is "8 light-minutes" which means it take light about 8 minutes, traveling at 299,792,458 meters/second (about 186,000 miles/second) to reach Earth after it leaves the Sun.
• Mass: Lets start by saying the Sun is VERY heavy. It’s so heavy it’s hard to write the number out, so scientists use scientific notation. The Sun's mass is about 1.98892 × 1030 kilograms, or about 4.4x1030 lbs. That means there are 30 zeros after the first number. Of course we can't weigh the Sun directly, but the Sun's mass can be estimated using its gravitational effect on the planets and cross-checked by calculating its weight based on its composition. The Sun's density is up to 150,000 kg/m³ (150 times the density of water on Earth).
• Lifespan: Scientists estimate the Sun is about 4.5 billion years old. Although the Sun is consuming its hydrogen fuel at a rate of about 600 million metric tons each second, based on its mass the Sun will continue to shine at its present brightness for 5 to 6 billion MORE years.
• Composition: The Sun consists of hydrogen (about 74% of its mass, or 92% of its volume), helium (about 24% of mass, 7% of volume), and trace quantities of other elements, including iron, nickel, oxygen, silicon, sulfur, magnesium, carbon, neon, calcium, and chromium. The Sun's composition can be determined by looking at its elemental spectral emissions.
• Structure: the Sun is made of many different layers, each with its own characteristics and important functions. The Core in the middle is where the fusion takes place. A very dense Radiative Zone around the Core transmit electromagnetic radiation from the Core out to the outer layers, but because of its high density it may take hundreds of thousands to millions of years for the energy to escape to the surface. The Convective zone is a zone of churning plasma with rising areas of hotter material and sinking areas of cooling material that has released its energy. The Photosphere is effectively the surface layer of the Sun and it is the layer we actually see; providing light, heat and energy to our planet. The Sun technically extends beyond the Photosphere but the density of these areas, which include areas called the Chromosphere, the Transition region, the Corona, and the Heliosphere, drop very quickly and becomes akin to an atmosphere. Huge loops of magnetically convulsing plasma called Coronal Loops often link distant areas of the Sun. Other enormous events called Coronal Mass Ejections can spew radiation into space and cause significant damage to electronics on Earth over 93 million miles away.
• Formation: Current scientific theory holds the Sun is a "third generation" star that formed about 4.59 billion years ago during the rapid collapse of a molecular cloud. Scientists believe other stars must have been around our area of the galaxy before our Sun because the Sun contains heavy elements that must have been created by the explosion of older stars that are now long gone. It is believed that dust and gas in the molecular cloud gravitationally coalesced into a rotating disk that eventually became the Sun and all the contemporary planets and asteroids and comets that make up our solar system. As the gas in the middle of the disk further condensed it began to get hotter as more mass streamed into the center until eventually nuclear fusion began and the first life giving Sunlight began to stream from the Sun.
• Fuel: The Sun is a nuclear fusion furnace. It is so massive that Hydrogen atoms are squeezed together with enough force that they "fuse" and become the heavier element Helium. This releases tremendous energy and it is the result of this fusion reaction that we experience as light, and other effects of the Sun, here on Earth.
• Temperature: The Sun's temperature depends on where it is measured. The Sun Photosphere, the part we actually see and experience on a daily basis, is a about 5000-6000 degrees Centigrade. This is relatively cool considering the interior of the Sun is measured in the MILLIONS of degrees (between 10 and 15 million) depending on pressures and magnetic forces that fluctuate in the fusion reactions going on in the core. Interestingly, although the Sun generally gets cooler from the middle towards the surface, the layers above the surface, such as the Corona, are again measured in millions of degrees.
• Energy Output: The Sun is constantly emitting huge amounts of energy across a broad range of the electromagnetic spectrum. Like its mass, the Sun's total energy output is hard to put in numbers that are readily comprehendible. But put simply the Sun emits about 386 billion billion megawatts. After traveling the roughly 93 million miles to Earth the Sun's energy is still measured at about 1300-1400 watts/square meter. To get a sense for the amount of energy that represents, imagine a sphere around the Sun with a radius of about 93 million miles with more than a dozen 100 watt light bulbs occupying every roughly 3x3' section of the surface of the sphere. Not all the 1300-1400 watts/square meter gets to Earth however because our atmosphere absorbs and shields us from a significant part of the energy. Roughly speaking about 1000 watts/square meter hits the Earth when the Sun is directly over head. The number drops during the morning and evening as the energy travels through more of the atmosphere. Of course no energy falls directly on the part of Earth that is in night. But the atmosphere, land and water that are warmed up during the day slowly release their heat at night and contribute to remarkably stable day/night temperature swings usually measured in only 10's of degrees, and rarely more than 100 degrees.
(The text above was created by Stephen Honikman. Stephen and colleague Jeff Levy, recently developed an approach to enable Jewish organizations to power their facilities with solar energy, without the need for the organizations to expend any of their own capital. More information can be found at www.JFSI.org. You can contact Stephen at sch@jfsi.org.)
"Each day at noon, the sun makes its transit through the meridian; it is then always due south, and highest in the sky. The shadow of a vertical post or gnomon then points north and is shorter in length than at any other time. The time interval between two successive transits of the sun defines the apparent solar day." (from Mapping Time: the calendar and its history, by E.G. Edwards. Oxford University Press. p. 24)
The Sun provides Earth with as much energy every hour as human civilization uses every year. (Oliver Morton, Nature:international weekly journal of science)
Dr. Mark Jacobson of Stanford University compares the relative power of various solar and geo-based energy sources to show us the total global energy available per second:
The Sun: 31,000,000 GW (gigawatts)
Wind: 72,000 GW
Hydro: 6,000 GW
Wave: 5,000 GW
Tidal: 4,000 GW
Read about his important study here:
http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2009/january7/power-010709.html
http://www.eia.doe.gov/kids/energyfacts/sources/renewable/solar.html
<a href="http://www.genericmedpharma.com">GENERIC VIAGRA</a>
<a href="http://www.genericmedpharma.com">GENERIC CIALIS</a>
<a href="http://www.genericmedpharma.com">GENERIC PROPECIA</a>
<a href="http://www.genericmedpharma.com">GENERIC LEVITRA</a>
<a href="http://www.genericmedpharma.com">GENERIC AVODART</a>
<a href="http://www.genericmedpharma.com">GENERIC KAMAGRA</a>
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Contributors to this page: darz , genericmedpharma , james123 , jamessmithforum , melissam , Liore and ninabeth - last modified on Tue Jul 13, 2010 10:57 am.