180 Unknown Facts About Sun

180 Unknown Facts About Sun

The sun is 4.6 billion years old.
Hydrogen is Sun's primary fuel.
The Sun travels at 220 kilometers per second.
The Sun is composed of hydrogen (70%) and Helium (28%).
The Sun rotates in the opposite direction to Earth and travels at 220 kilometers per second;
The Sun is the closest thing to a perfect sphere found in nature. Despite its size, there is only a 10-kilometer difference in its equatorial and polar diameters;
The Sun is not orange, yellow, or red. In reality, it is white.
The word "Sun" has its origins in the Old English spelling "Sunne";
In Ancient Greece, the big, glowing star was known as Helios. In Ancient Rome, the flaming orb was called Sol. In Ancient Egypt, the star was named Ra.
The Sun is a main-sequence G2V star (or Yellow Dwarf).
The Sun is 109 times wider than the Earth and 330,000 times as massive.
The Sun’s surface area is 11,990 times that of the Earth’s.
The distance between the Earth and the Sun is an Astronomical Unit (AU)
One million Earths could fit inside the Sun.
A hollow Sun would fit around 960,000 spherical Earths. If squished inside with no wasted space, then around 1,300,000 would fit inside. The Sun’s surface area is 11,990 times that of the Earth’s.
Can humans land on the Sun? Technically, it is still not possible. However, Parker Solar Probe, a NASA robotic spacecraft launched in 2018, will approach to within 4.3 million miles (6.9 million kilometers);
The star of the Solar System features six different layers: the core, the radiative zone, and the convective zone (inner layers), and the photosphere, the chromosphere, and the corona (outer layers);
the star of the Solar System features six different layers | Illustration: Kelvinsong/Creative Commons.
The Sun is at the center and heart of the Solar System thanks to its powerful gravitational pull and an extensive magnetic field;
If you could take apart the Sun and pile up its different elements, you’d find that 74% of its mass comes from hydrogen. with 24% helium. The remaining 2% is includes trace amounts of iron, nickel, oxygen, and all the other elements we have in the Solar System. In other words, the Solar System is mostly made of hydrogen.
We know of some amazingly large and bright stars, like Eta Carina and Betelgeuse. But they’re incredibly far away. Our own Sun is a relatively bright star. If you could take the 50 closest stars within 17 light-years of the Earth, the Sun would be the 4th brightest star in absolute terms. Not bad at all.
Astronomers think that the Sun (and the planets) formed from the solar nebula about 4.59 billion years ago. The Sun is in the main sequence stage right now, slowly using up its hydrogen fuel. But at some point, in about 5 billion years from now, the Sun will enter the red giant phase, where it swells up to consume the inner planets – including Earth (probably). It will slough off its outer layers, and then shrink back down to a relatively tiny white dwarf.
Between 18 and 35 percent of the world's population sneeze when exposed to sunlight - it's the photic sneeze reflex, also known as Autosomal Compelling Helio-Ophthalmic Outburst (ACHOO);
On December 10, 2019, the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope took the highest-resolution photo of the Sun of all time. The picture reveals the surface of the star of the Solar System divided up into small popcorn-line cells and plasma rising high into the solar atmosphere. The optical instrument is located in Maui, Hawaii;
Indian astrologists have 12 different names and meanings for the Sun, representing the 12 months of the year: Mitra (The Friend), Ravi (The Radiant), Surya (Giver of Beauty), Bhanu (Catalyst of Emotion), Khaga (Awesome), Pushna (Nourisher), Hiranya Garba (The All-Inclusive), Marica (Destroyer of Darkness), Aditya (Illuminator of the Way), Savitra (The Arouser), Arka (Flash of Warmth) and Bhaskara (Liberator);
The Sun is 24,000-26,000 light years from the galactic centre. It takes the Sun 225-250 million years to complete an orbit of the centre of the Milky Way.
The distance from the Sun to Earth changes throughout the year.
This is because the Earth travels on an elliptical orbit around the Sun. The distance between the two bodies varies from 147 to 152 million kilometres.
The Earth is one of the Sun's many satellites, alongside 750,000 asteroids;
Earth orbits the Sun at an average distance of 92,955,807 miles (149,597,870 kilometers);
However, depending on the time of the year (January or July), it can be at 91 million miles (146 million kilometers) or 94.5 million miles (152 million kilometers);
Until the 16th century, it was thought that the Sun orbited the Earth;
It is 400,000 times brighter than a full Moon and brighter than 85 percent of the stars in the Milky Way.
The Sun is responsible for 45 percent of the tidal forces generated on Earth - the Moon does the rest;
When the Sun and Moon are pulling in the same direction, they're stretching the Earth, thus making humans microscopically taller;
Every second, the Sun provides the energy equivalent to 10 billion nuclear bombs.
The solar wind is a celestial breeze made of electrons and protons that have escaped from the Sun's gravity. It travels at 280 miles per second (450.6 kilometers per second) and takes up to four days to reach the Earth;
When the Sun has collapsed to a white dwarf star, it will be approximately the same volume as Earth, but keep its ginormous mass.
The Sun orbits the centre of the Milky Way. It takes the Sun approximately 250 million years to complete a cycle. So far, the Sun has circled the Milky Way 18 times over its lifetime.
The Sun is 30,000 light-years away from the center of the Milky Way.
The Sun is traveling at 220 kilometers per second. That means the sun travels 7.33 times faster than the Earth. The Earth’s orbital speed is 30 kilometers per second.
The Sun completes a rotation every 25-35 days. Of course, it’s always daytime on the sun!
The Sun is composed of 92% hydrogen, 7% helium and 1% other gasses. Six ten-billionths of the Sun are made of gold!
Skylab was the first manned spacecraft to study the Sun in February 1974.
Many ancient civilizations have centred their culture and religion around the Sun, including the Aztecs (sun gods: Tonatiuh and Huitzilopochtli), Incas (sun god: Inti), Egyptians (sun god: Ra), Greeks (sun gods: Helios and Apollo), Japanese (sun goddess: Amaterasu) and many more.
The sun gods of the Aztec religion demanded regular human sacrifices.
Your weight on the Sun would be 27 times your weight on Earth so if you weigh 75 kilos on earth, your weight would be 2,025 kilos on the Sun.
Anaxagoras, a scientist and philosopher from modern-day Turkey, was the first to theorize the Sun was in fact a star in 450 BC.
Near the sunspots, sudden bursts of brightness can appear called solar flares.
Solar flares are caused by magnetic fields of the Sun colliding.
The amount of energy released by a solar flare is equivalent to an explosion of millions of 100-megaton hydrogen bombs. This is ten million times greater than the energy released during a volcanic explosion but less than a tenth of the total energy emitted by the sun every second.
Every second the Sun emits more energy than humans have used in the last 10,000 years. If only we could harness this energy more, we wouldn’t need to burn so many fossil fuels!
Every day, plants convert sunlight into energy, consuming the equivalent of six times the power that has been used in all of human history.
The Sun is approximately half-way through its lifespan. It is currently 4.7 billion years old and has enough hydrogen to burn for another 5 billion years.
The Sun burns approximately four million tonnes of hydrogen every second.
The Sun creates its energy through a process known as nuclear fusion.
The heat and light released from the core of the Sun (initially as gamma rays) takes approximately one million years to reach its surface.
As well as heat and light, the Sun also produces a low-density stream of charged particles which we call the solar wind. Solar winds spread throughout the universe at 450 kilometers per second.
After all the hydrogen in the Sun has burned out, it will burn its helium for another 130 million years. Over this time, the Sun will expand to engulf Mercury, Venus and Earth, becoming a red giant. If humans are still alive at this time, they will need to find another planet to survive!
When the Sun has burned all its Hydrogen, it will continue to burn helium for 130 million more years. During this time, it will expand to the point that it will engulf Mercury, Venus, and the Earth. At this stage it will have become a red giant
After its red giant phase, the Sun will collapse. It will keep its enormous mass with the approximate volume of our planet. When this happens, it will have become a white dwarf.
Energy is generated at the Sun’s core, by nuclear fusion, as Hydrogen converts to Helium. Hot objects expand, the Sun would explode if it were not for its enormous gravitational force. The temperature on the surface of the Sun is closer to 5,600 degrees Celsius.
It's strong enough to hold the solar system intact, primarily due to the Sun's size and mass;
The Sun is the largest and most massive object in the solar system. It contains approximately 99.86 percent of all the mass in the solar system;
It's more than 100 Earths wide and could theoretically fit all eight planets inside nearly 600 times, or 1.3 million Earths;
The Sun's magnetic field - called the heliosphere - protects the planets from harmful cosmic radiation;
Although invisible to the naked eye, the Sun's surface features a few dark areas - sunspots. These strong pockets of magnetism interact with the Earth's atmosphere, creating the so-called aurora borealis;
The distance between Earth and Sun changes. This is because the Earth travels on a elliptical orbit path around the Sun. The distance between the two ranges from 147 to 152 million km. This distance between them is one Astronomical Unit (AU).
The Sun rotates in the opposite direction to Earth with the Sun rotating from west to east instead of east to west like Earth.
The Sun rotates more quickly at its equator than it does close to its poles. This is known as differential rotation.
Temperatures inside the Sun can reach 15 million degrees Celsius. Energy is generated through nuclear fusion in the Sun’s core – this is when hydrogen converts to helium – and because objects generally expand, the Sun would explode like an enormous bomb if it wasn’t for it’s tremendous gravitational pull.
The gravity of the Sun anchors the Earth and all the other planets together in the Solar System.
Without the Sun, the Earth would travel in a straight line.
Without the Sun, there would be no life on Earth. The Sun produces energy that supports all life through a process known as photosynthesis.
The study of the interior of the Sun is known as helioseismology.
Due to a phenomenon known as atmospheric scattering, the Sun appears to change color throughout the day, but it is actually a mixture of all the colours.
The parts of the Sun which are relatively cooler appear darker. These are known as sunspots. They are cooler because they have a strong magnetic field, preventing the convection of energy.
The Sun is almost a perfect sphere. Considering the sheer size of the Sun, there is only a 10 km difference in its polar and equatorial diameters – this makes it the closest thing to a perfect sphere observed in nature.
The Sun is traveling at 220 km per second. It is around 24,000-26,000 light-years from the galactic center and it takes the Sun approximately 225-250 million years to complete one orbit of the center of the Milky Way.
The Sun will eventually be about the size of Earth. Once the Sun has completed its red giant phase, it will collapse. It’s huge mass will be retained, but it will have a volume similar to that of Earth. When that happens, it will be known as a white dwarf.
Over one million Earth’s could fit inside the Sun. If you were to fill a hollow Sun with spherical Earths, somewhere around 960,000 would fit inside. However, if you squashed those Earths to ensure there was no wasted space then you could fit 1,300,000 Earths inside the Sun. The surface area of the Sun is 11,990 times that of Earth.
One day the Sun will consume the Earth. The Sun will continue to burn for about 130 million years after it burns through all of its hydrogens, instead of burning helium. During this time it will expand to such a size that it will engulf Mercury, Venus, and Earth. When it reaches this point, it will have become a red giant star.
It takes eight minutes for light to reach Earth from the Sun. The average distance from the Sun to the Earth is about 150 million km. Light travels at 300,000 km per second so dividing one by the other gives you 500 seconds – eight minutes and twenty seconds. This energy can reach Earth in mere minutes, but it takes millions of years to travel from the Sun’s core to its surface.
The Sun is halfway through its life. At 4.5 billion years old, the Sun has burned off around half of its hydrogen stores and has enough left to continue burning hydrogen for another 5 billion years. Currently, the Sun is a yellow dwarf star.
We all know the sun is hot, but just how hot? To give you an idea, the average surface temperature of the Earth hovers around 17 °C. The average surface temperature on the sun, however, is 5,500 °C.
The temperature inside the sun makes the surface temperature look cold: it can be as hot as 15 million °C.
The Sun is as bright as 4 trillion 100-watt light bulbs. Imagine paying for that energy bill!
The sun remains an average distance of 150 million kilometers from the Earth. This is 391 times further away than the moon.
The sun’s light takes 8 minutes to reach Earth.
The Sun is 99.86% of the Solar System’s mass and it has roughly 330,000 times more mass than the Earth.
The Sun contains 99.86% of the mass in the Solar System.
The mass of the Sun is approximately 330,000 times greater than that of Earth. It is almost three quarters Hydrogen, whilst most of the remaining mass is Helium.
The Sun is an almost perfect sphere.
There is a 10-kilometre difference between the Sun’s polar and equatorial diameter. This means it is the closest thing to a perfect sphere that has been observed in nature.
The Sun will consume the Earth.
The Sun is an average distance of 150 million kilometres from the Earth. Light travels at 300,000 kilometres per second. Dividing one by the other gives us an approximate time of 500 seconds (or eight minutes and 20 seconds). Although this energy reaches Earth in a few minutes, it will already have taken millions of years to travel from the Sun’s core to its surface.
At around 4.6 billion years old, the Sun has already burned off about half of its store of Hydrogen. It has enough left to continue to burn Hydrogen for approximately 5 billion years. The Sun is currently a type of star known as a Yellow Dwarf.
The wind is a stream of charged particles. This travels at approximately 450 kilometres per second through the solar system. Solar wind occurs when the magnetic field of the Sun extends into space.
This is where the word “solar” comes from, which is used to describe things that are derived from, related to, or caused by the Sun
The Sun accounts for 99.86% of the mass in the solar system. It has a mass of around 330,000 times that of Earth. It is three-quarters hydrogen and most of its remaining mass is helium.
The Sun generates solar winds. These are ejections of plasma (extremely hot charged particles) that originate in the layer of the Sun known as the corona and they can travel through the solar system at up to 450 km per second.
The atmosphere of the Sun is composed of three layers: the photosphere, the chromosphere, and the corona.
The Sun is classified as a yellow dwarf star. It is a main-sequence star with surface temperatures between 5,000 and 5,700 degrees celsius (9,000 and 10,300 degrees Fahrenheit).
The Aurora Borealis and Aurora Australis are caused by the interaction of solar winds with Earth’s atmosphere.
It is the result of the collapse of part of a giant molecular cloud that consisted mostly of hydrogen and helium and that possibly gave birth to many other stars;
What type of star is the Sun? The official scientific classification is G2V;
What is the Sun made of? The ball of fire consists of 74.9 percent hydrogen, 23.8 percent helium, and 2 percent heavier elements such as carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, iron, and neon;
How does the Sunburn if there is no oxygen in space? The truth is that it doesn't actually "burn." It converts burn hydrogen into helium by using carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen as catalysts;
At the Sun's core, temperatures reach at least 27,000,000 °F (15,000,000 °C);
The surface of the Sun has an average temperature of 9,941 °F (5,505 °C or 5,778 K);
The Sun releases an enormous amount of energy by nuclear fusion in the form of radiation, electricity, and solar wind. On Earth, we get the chance to receive its heat and light;
Its mean distance from the Earth is equivalent to 8 minutes and 19 seconds at the speed of light. In other words, they're 92,955,807 miles (149,597,870 kilometers) apart;
The Sun's volatility is contained thanks to its tremendous gravity, which keeps the eight planets of the Solar System held together;
Scientists believe that the Sun's changes in its magnetic field influence and have an impact on the surface pressure of the Earth's atmosphere, resulting in changes in weather patterns;
Solar flares are the most violent manifestations of the Sun at the peak of its solar cycle;
The American, French, and Russian revolutions and the Paris Commune occurred during solar maximum, the 11-year cycle of highest Sun activity;
The magnetic fields created by the Sun can be strong enough to disrupt communications on Earth;
The diameter of the Sun is 856,658 miles (137,8657 kilometers) larger than that of the Earth;
The light emitted by the Sun takes 8 minutes and 19 seconds to reach the Earth. However, that same ray of light is estimated to be between 50 and 100,000 million years old by the time it "touches" our skin;
Stonehenge, built somewhere between 3,000 BC and 2,000 BC, is aligned so that on the solstice, the Sun rises directly over the heel stone, and the first rays shine into the center of the stone circle;
Greek astronomer and mathematician Aristarchus of Samos was the first person to suggest that the Sun is the center around which planets orbit. The theory was presented between 310 BC and 230 BC;
Aristarchus' heliocentric vision was later developed in detail by Nicolaus Copernicus in the 16th century.
A person weighing 165 pounds (75 kilograms) on planet Earth would weigh 4,466 pounds (2,025 kilograms) on the Sun's surface;
During a total solar eclipse, the human eyes can see the solar corona for a brief period;
The Sun's ultraviolet light has antiseptic properties and can be used to sanitize water and tools;
It is possible that in about 1.5 billion years, the Earth will become uninhabitable - average temperatures of 176 °F (80 °C) will make it too hot, and oceans will evaporate;
The sun has a diameter of 1,392,684 km and an equatorial distance of 4,370,005.6 km. It makes Earth look small, very small. In fact, 1.3 million Earths could fit inside the sun.
The Sun’s mass is 333,000 times the mass of the Earth.
We all know the sun is hot, but just how hot? To give you an idea, the average surface temperature of the Earth hovers around 17 °C. The average surface temperature on the sun, however, is 5,500 °C.
The temperature inside the sun makes the surface temperature look cold: it can be as hot as 15 million °C.
The Sun is as bright as 4 trillion 100-watt light bulbs. Imagine paying for that energy bill!
The sun remains an average distance of 150 million kilometers from the Earth. This is 391 times further away than the moon.
The sun’s light takes 8 minutes to reach Earth.
The Sun is 99.86% of the Solar System’s mass and it has roughly 330,000 times more mass than the Earth.
The Sun is closest example of a perfect sphere we have so far discovered in nature. There is only a 10-kilometre difference between the Sun’s equatorial and polar diameter.
The Sun is a second-generation star and so it is partly made out of other stars.
The atmosphere of the Sun has three parts: the photosphere, chromosphere and the solar corona.
The sun has two forms of radiation: electromagnetic (photons) and particle (electrons, protons, alpha particles and others) radiation.
The sun emits three kinds of energy: infrared radiation, visible light and ultraviolet light.
The Earth’s ozone layer absorbs most of the harmful UV radiation from the Sun. It’s not all bad, however. The Sun’s UV rays also have antiseptic properties.
Every 11 years, the Sun’s magnetic polarity reverses. The north pole becomes the south pole and the south pole becomes the north pole.
Isaac Newton proved the Earth orbited the Sun (and not the other way around), but Copernicus argued this in the 16th century and the Greek philosopher, Aristarchus, was the first to suggest this.
We live on the planet, so we think it’s an equal member of the Solar System. But that couldn’t be further from the truth. The reality is that the mass of the Sun accounts for 99.8% of the mass of the Solar System. And most of that final 0.2% comes from Jupiter. So the mass of the Earth is a fraction of a fraction of the mass of the Solar System. Really, we barely exist.
The surface of the Sun reaches temperatures of 6,000 Kelvin. But this is actually much less than the Sun’s atmosphere. Above the surface of the Sun is a region of the atmosphere called the chromosphere, where temperatures can reach 100,000 K. But that’s nothing. There’s an even more distant region called the corona, which extends to a volume even larger than the Sun itself. Temperatures in the corona can reach 1 million K.

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