Interesting Facts About the Sun - Discover Amazing Things
Collection of the most fascinating and interesting facts about the Sun that you probably don't know. This is important scientific information that can seem strange and sometimes even scary. The Sun is an essential part of our solar system and plays a crucial role in maintaining life on Earth. Our star is impressive in scale. What do you really know about the Sun? Most likely, many people remember that sunlight takes about 8 minutes to reach the Earth, and the distance is 150 million kilometers. How massive is the Sun? What temperature does it have? How much mass is lost with radiation? How long will our star exist? Find out the answers!
Top 10 Amazing Facts
The Sun will become a Red Giant in about 7.7 billion years. The radius will increase by 256 times, and the outer layers of the star will reach the current orbit of the Earth.
If we weigh the entire Solar System, it turns out that our Sun contains about 99.87% of all the matter. This is equivalent to about 333 000 Earths.
Sunlight takes about 8 min to reach Earth, but photons can take thousands to millions of years to journey from the Sun's core to its surface. It all depends on the random "path" that the photon travels.
The "solar wind" is constantly blowing from the surface of the Sun - a stream of charged particles that released from the corona of a star. For this reason, the Sun loses millions of tons of mass per second.
Every 11 years, the Sun's magnetic fields reverse. North becomes south and south becomes north. For a full cycle of 22 years, the poles return to their original position. This process is very stable and is called "Hale's Law".
About 73% of the Sun's mass is hydrogen, and another 25% is helium. So, there is very little left for the rest of the elements (oxygen, carbon, iron, neon, nitrogen, and others).
The temperature in the Sun's core is about 15 million degrees Celsius, while on the surface it is only 5500°C. The core is much
hotter because it is where nuclear fusion reactions take place.
The Sun is gradually getting hotter and brighter. In about 1.1 billion years from now, our star will become 11% brighter. Life on Earth under such conditions can only survive in the depths of the oceans at best.
The total mass carried away from the Sun by the solar wind is huge. Thus, the Sun loses in 150 million years a mass equal to our entire planet.
On our blue planet Earth, sunsets look red. But on Mars, which we used to call the red planet, the setting sun will be bluish.
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