Photo Credit: www.crookedwillow.net
We all know that the Sun is powerful, but do we truly comprehend just how powerful it is? Here are some of the most mind-blowing facts about the sun.
In terms of the solar system, our star, the sun, is categorized as a moderate sized star about half way through it’s life cycle. The Sun’s gravitational force holds the planets within our solar system and within it’s orbit. On Earth, we benefit from the life-giving energy it emits. The sheer power that the sun radiates is incredible; here are some other facts about the sun to help us better understand its true power.
Star Profile
Age: 4.6 Billion Years
Type: Yellow Dwarf
Diameter: 1,392,684 km
Mass: 1,989,100,000,000,000,000,000 Billion kg
- The sun is so large that approximately 1 Million Earth’s can fit inside of it!
- The sun is so large that it contains about 99.86% of all the mass of the entire solar system!
- You’ll need plenty of sunscreen if you’re visiting the Sun! The surface temperature is roughly 5,500 degrees Celsius (9,941 degrees Fahrenheit)! The sun’s corona, or atmosphere, is a couple million degrees hotter than that! An average summer day on earth is around 85 degrees Fahrenheit.
- The Sun is made up of 23% Helium, 75% Hydrogen and 2% heavier elements and consumes 4 million tons of hydrogen every second.
- Once the Sun burns out of Hydrogen fuel it will then burn helium.
- The Earth is so far from the Sun that light from the sun (traveling at the speed of light) takes approximately 8 minutes to reach Earth. So if the sun suddenly stopped shining, it would take a full 8 minutes for people on Earth to be affected!
- The Sun is approximately half way through its life of 9.2 Billion Years, based on comparable G2 stars
- Magnetic Polarity reverses every 11 years on the sun, thus its north magnetic pole becomes a south pole, and vice versa.
- To match the energy generated by the Sun one would have to detonate 100,000,000,000 tons of dynamite every second.
- A person weighing 150 pounds on Earth would weigh 4,200 pounds on the sun because the sun’s gravity is 28 times that of Earth!!
- An area of the Sun’s surface, the size of a postage stamp, shines with the power of 1,500,000 candles!
- 25.4 earth days is the average time it takes the sun to rotate on its axis
- If the Earth were the size of a quarter, the sun would be as large as a 9 foot ball and would be located a football field distance from Earth.
- 27 Million C degrees is the temperature of the core of the earth or 15 Million C degrees.
- If a drop sized matter from the core of the Sun is placed on the surface of the Earth, no living organism will survive for a distance of 150 km from that drop.
- To power the Sun with all of Earth's energy resources; coal, oil, gas, and wood would only keep the Sun burning for a few days.
- One could power 64 100 watt light bulbs with just one square centimeter of the Sun's surface.
Incredible Solar Power
When you realize the true power of the sun, it makes you realize the importance of it, given that it powers almost all of our energy sources, be it ancient fossilized sunlight in the form of hydrocarbons, current carbohydrates being created by plants and consumed by animals or wind created by temperature variation created from the sun! It really helps us understand the task at hand of moving beyond finite fossil fuels and learning how to power our world off of our current solar gain. Do you know other crazy facts about the sun? Please share in the comments below!
This post is part of our larger information resource on sun ovens. For a comprehensive overview of the sun oven, a description of how the technology works, and recommendations for the best one to buy, click here.