What Makes the Sun So Hot? Amazing Facts About Our Nearest Star

British spelling.

The information contained in my articles has been gained by reading many books on the subject. I won't pretend to be an expert, but I hope that you find my short reads interesting.

Our local star, the Sun.

Every second the nuclear fusion taking place in the Sun's core is fusing 600 million tonnes of hydrogen into 596 million tonnes of helium, and those missing 4 million tonnes are converted into pure energy, which is the source of the light and heat that reaches the Earth.

But surprisingly, the Sun's hydrogen fuel supply is far from running out and has ample fuel left to last for an estimated 5 billion years more.

Roughly 1 million tonnes of mass are being lost from the Sun every second; that massive weight loss is the result of the solar wind streaming away from its surface.

This is another way of describing how much mass is leaving the Sun; it loses the equivalent of one Earth mass every 150 million years.

From the time of the Sun's birth, it has lost about 30 Earth masses, all due to the solar wind streaming away from its surface. To us, it seems like a lot of mass, but the Sun has a mass 333,000 times that of the Earth.

The Sun accounts for 99.86% of the total mass in the solar system. Two forces are keeping the Sun in a stable condition: one being the fusing of hydrogen to helium, creating an outward pressure from its core, and the other force being gravity, which is pulling inwards; this stability will last for another 5 billion years or more.

The Sun has a diameter of about 1.39 million kilometres (864,000 miles) and a core temperature of over 15 million degrees Celsius (27 million degrees Fahrenheit).

It is composed of roughly 70% hydrogen and 28% helium, with the remaining fraction made up of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and a small mix of other elements.

Throughout its lifetime, the Sun will fuse hydrogen into helium and, later in its life, will produce elements such as carbon and oxygen. Larger and more massive stars can fuse even heavier elements, ultimately ending with iron.

The Sun is so large that it would take around 1.3 million Earths to fill its volume.

The distance between the Earth and the Sun is approximately 149.6 million kilometres (93 million miles). To put this staggering distance into perspective, imagine, despite the obvious impossibilities, a Boeing 737 airliner attempting the journey. Travelling at its normal cruising speed, it would take over 20 years to reach the Sun.

We continue to seek new knowledge about our nearest star.

On 8 August 2001, NASA launched the Genesis mission, a 200-million-dollar project designed to collect samples of the solar wind.

The spacecraft travelled 1.5 million kilometres (930,000 miles) from Earth and successfully gathered the samples.

However, upon returning on 8 September 2004, it crash-landed in Utah due to a parachute malfunction. Fortunately, some of its sample collectors were recovered intact. Space missions don't always go to plan, but we simply have to keep trying.

Our planet is orbiting the Sun in the Goldilocks zone, or habitable zone; if it weren't, we and all the other incredible life forms would not exist. If the Earth were much closer to the Sun, the water in the oceans, lakes and rivers would boil away, and if it were much farther from the Sun, all the life-giving water would be frozen solid.

Liquid water is needed for all the millions of plant and animal species to exist on our magical home planet.

I hope you have found my story interesting and educational.