The Sun

What Is The Sun? The sun is a giant ball of gas being 92.1% hydrogen and 7.8% helium. The sun is held together by its own gravity. As you know, the sun is the centre of our solar system, and makes up 99.8% of mass. Imagine if the size of the sun was the height of our front door. If that was the case, Earth would be the size of a twenty cent piece. The Suns heat is at a temperature of 15 million degrees! Currently spacecraft are increasing our knowledge of the sun. Since the sun is not a solid body, different parts of it rotate at different rates.

Sun Explosion When the sun explodes which will be in approximately 4-5 billion years. There are three different possibilities that humans have thought of. Theory 1: the sun will expand into a red giant, with the inside increasing in temperature and outside decreasing. The sun will expand increasing to the size of anywhere between Earth and Mars. Although the suns outer layers will decrease in temperature, it will still be way to hot and all the oceans will evaporate.

Sun Explosion Theory 2: The sun is in the middle of its life cycle and will explode in 4-5 billion years. During this period of time, the sun will expand and become a red giant. This will crush the Earth but hopefully the people of the future Earth will be able to evacuate or at least save Earth. The explosion would be able to destroy about 100 billion stars and could take out an entire galaxy.

Sun Explosion Theory 3: People don’t think that the sun will explode and in about 5 billion years it will have used up all of its ‘nuclear fuel’ and enter the red giant stage crushing earth. This is a long time away so people will be able to come up with a plan.