10 FASCINATING AND INTERESTING FACTS ABOUT THE SUN
10 Fascinating And Interesting Facts About The Sun
You know the sun can burn you, you know you’re not allowed to look directly at it for too long, and you know it sets and rises each day. But what else do you know about the mysterious life-giver in the sky? In this article, Beauty and Tips uncovers 10 fascinating and interesting facts about the sun.
Call it the Sun, call it your very own Star, or call it The Big Yellow Scare Ball. Whatever you wanna call it, the sun is a super powerful, super hot thing that we should probably be a lot more grateful for. After all, it gives us life and vitality! It helps plants to grow, cures SAD, and makes a holiday worth waiting for. Hey, it can even brighten up a day at work when it makes an appearance. We love you, sun!
(That said, it’s not exactly easy to give thanks to the sun after it’s just burnt us and ruined our holiday. Thanks, sun!) The thing is, though, that the sun is such an amazing star that so many of us take for granted. Some of us know as much about it as folk did two-thousand years ago (that it’s hot, basically!). If you’re curious to know more, let’s take a look at 10 fascinating and interesting facts about the sun.
You Will Not Believe How Big The Sun Is
Up in the distant sky, the sun looks pretty small. When you squint your eye and frame it with your thumb and index finger, it fills a bigger hole than the moon – but that isn’t saying much because the moon is tiny! However, you probably never realised how big the sun actually is. Well, it has a diameter of 1.3914 million km. If you are bad at math and have NO idea what that means, let’s put it another way: the diameter of the Earth is 12,742 km, and so about 1,300,000 planet Earths can fit inside of the Sun. WOW. We’re not joking.
But! There Are Bigger Stars
As big as the Sun is – and see below for further evidence of its sheer size – there are even bigger heavyweights in our known Universe. Yep, there exists a star that is EVEN bigger than our Sun. We’re not sure about you guys, but we definitely don’t wanna meet it. Apparently it’s so gigantic that if it entered our Solar System, it would extend from the Sun to Saturn.
We just can’t even…
Still, you’d get an awesome tan. Silver linings and all that!
The Sun Contains Most Of The Mass In Our Solar System
Our solar system is a pretty big place, right? It’s got at least eight planets (Pluto is a debatable ninth), as well as scores of moons, asteroids, and a whole load of cosmic debris flying around the place. In other words, there’s a lot of mass in here. But to demonstrate how insignificant all that mass is, the sun accounts for 99.86% of all of it. That’s incredible, especially when you consider how big Jupiter is. Compared to the Sun, however, Jupiter is a mere morsel, no bigger than you or I. (okay, it’s a lot bigger than us and would definitely beat us in a fight)
Without The Sun, The Solar System Would Fall Apart
Another one of interesting facts about the sun is that it has an insanely powerful gravitational field. Without it, the planets would drift off into the cosmic ether. Bye, Mercury! BYE US.
The Sun Is Almost The Perfect Sphere
Just like earth, the Sun isn’t quite the perfect sphere. But it’s as close as such a big, created object can get. Kudos.
The Light You’re Seeing Is Eight Minutes Old
There is light all around us in the big ‘ole Universe. But did you know that it’s old light? Like, really old. For example, the light from the stars are at least a hundred years old – possibly more. Indeed, the stars we are seeing at night could have died a long time ago. But because light takes so long to reach anywhere in the Universe, we won’t see a star fade and die until many years later. The light from our Sun takes a little less longer to reach us – just eight minutes in fact. Its light travels at 300,000 km per second, which is pretty fast!
The Sun Is Pretty Simply Put Together
It’s only got a handful of elements. It’s 72% hydrogen, 26% helium, while the rest of its chemical composition is made up of neon, carbon, magnesium, silicon, iron, nitrogen and oxygen.
The Sun Will Die
It’s pretty scary to think that humanity depends on the Sun, and that if the Sun dies our time is up. According to scientists, that’s exactly what will happen. Yup, that giant yellow ball of licking flames in the sky that’s a million times bigger than our planet will eventually collapse and die, taking us with it. That said, this will come after the sun has already grown so big that it consumes us. We’re not sure which is scarier to be honest.
The Sun Will Die … But Not Just Yet
Another one of interesting facts about the sun is that, scarily, it has already approached middle-age. But don’t panic too much – middle age in Sun years is 5 billion years. So while it’s reached a midlife crisis, there are still another 5 billion years to go before it throws a massive hissy fit, eats us alive and then collapses.
THANK GOD.
Let’s just hope reincarnation isn’t true and we don’t come back at the wrong time, huh?
The Sun Is Getting Hotter All The Time
If you live in a perpetually cold place, you might be happy to read that the Sun is still getting hotter. Yay! But this is actually disastrous. Because a hotter sun means an angry sun. And when the Sun gets too hot and angry, it will kill all life on earth. See, before it consumes us and collapses and dies, the Sun will first heat up so much that there will be no water left on earth.
But don’t worry. That isn’t expected to happen for at least another 22 years.
WE’RE KIDDING IT WON’T HAPPEN FOR 1 BILLION YEARS.
We hope you liked these interesting facts about the sun. Feel free to add more in the comment section below.
Stay happy!
from Beauty And Tips Magazine
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