How The Sun Works

Hi readers you may be very eager to know that How Sun Works.

Our sun is basically a giant nuclear reactor at the center of our solar system but not like the ones here on earth. They create energy by nuclear fission that is a split large atoms like uranium to smaller lighter one and in the process release the large amount of energy. Atomic bombs also work in the same way is a reason why they are so destructive. The Sun creates energy by nuclear fusion, the most efficient way to create energy in the universe other than matter-antimatter annihilation. Fusion works the other way around the fuses the nuclei or the center of atoms of the lightest and most abundant element in the universe, hydrogen together under enormous pressure and heat to create helium the second most abundant and lightest element in the universe. Again in the process of doing this, a huge amount of energy is released and this ultimately provides the energy for all life on earth.

 Compared to the earth the Sun is massive.You could fit 1,000,000 earths into the Sun and still have a bit of room left over for more. it measures 864,000 miles across the earth by comparison is a piffling 7919 miles across. At the center of the Sun is core, this is the heart of the Sun away 99 cent of the nuclear fusion takes place and even this is about 200,000 miles cross 16,000 times the size of the earth. As the mass of the Sun's core is so great the effect of gravity is so strong that the pressure inside the core is about 265 billion times greater than that of air pressure at sea level on earth. This enormous pressure pushes up temperature to 15 million degrees celsius and that combination of pressure and heat allows the fusion to occur and the energy to be released. Every second the sun converts 600 million tons of hydrogen to helium. of this equivalent of about 4 million tons of hydrogen is converted into energy. To give you an idea of just how huge that amount of energy is like the world's entire consumption of energy in 2015 including oil, gas, coal and electricity was about 13,400 Mtoe. Now if you're unfamiliar with the toe measurement it means "tons of oil equivalent" or the amount of energy released by burning one ton of oil, not one barrel of oil, 1 ton of oil. So the total energy used by us humans in 2015 was equivalent to burning 13,400 million tonnes of oil but when we compare that to the output of the sun the sun would  put out enough energy in one second to power the entire world to just over 688,000 years. 

The astronomer George Abell illustrated in another way imagine a bridge of ice, two miles wide by a mile thick extending the 93 million miles from the earth to the Sun. If all the sun's energy was focused on to it it would melt the whole thing in one second. Lucky for us this energy is radiated out in all directions so we only receive a tiny fraction of it otherwise the earth would be burnt to a crisp. In fact the earth receives just 0.000000045% of the sun's total output but even this is still 7,500 times more than we consume. Now while the center of the sun is 15 million degrees by the time the energy reaches the surface is down too much more manageable 5500 degrees kelvin, which if you're into photography, film or video is were you get the color temperature of daylight. From from here it takes just 8 minutes for the light to reach earth. When it arrives some of it is reflected back into space and some is absorbed by the atmosphere but on a clear day around 70% of it reaches the surface today warm atmosphere and give us our "Goldilocks zone" planet, which is not too hot and it's not too cold it's just the right temperature. the Sun is a middle-aged star and although it's been going for around about 4.5 billion years it's been getting brighter as it gets older the right around 1% percent every 100 million years. In another 1 billion years it will be 10% brighter than it is now and although that might not seem like much it will probably make the earth too hot to support complex life  like ours. So we have a few hundred billion years left to evolve into a spacefaring species and find a new home amongst the outer planet or out in the stars beyond, that if we don't make ourselves extinct in the process and if we do, we just got to hope that whatever life evolves after us can do a better job before the Sun cooks the earth. 

So readers, this is the end of this article, and I hope you enjoyed it.