Solar Week - Ask a Question



Come here during Solar Week (next one: March 22-26, 2021) to interact. To post a question, click on your area of interest from the topics below, and then click on the "Ask New Question" button. Or EMAIL or tweet or plant in Answer Garden your question about the Sun or life as a scientist to us -- and watch for it to appear here.  You can also visit our FAQs (frequently asked questions). In between Solar Weeks in October and March, you can view all the archives here.

PrevPrev Go to previous topic
NextNext Go to next topic
Last Post 5/19/2015 7:00 PM by  Christina Cohen
The Sun
 1 Replies
Sort:
You are not authorized to post a reply.
Author Messages

Anonymous





Posts:


--
5/19/2015 9:19 AM
    How was the sun created and how will it die?
    Tags: sun, life cycle

    Christina Cohen



    Basic Member


    Posts:148
    Basic Member


    --
    5/19/2015 7:00 PM

    Hi,

    Although the Sun is pretty special to us, it is a fairly ordinary star. It formed about 4.6 billion years ago from the huge cloud of molecules and dust (out of which formed everything in our solar system). When parts of the cloud collapsed, one area became our solar system and the biggest chunk of material that clumped together became our Sun. It took about 100,000 years of collapsing until it got dense and hot enough for fusion to start at its center.

    Eventually, the Sun will run out of hydrogen to burn and it will start to expand and become a red giant. Unfortunately, Mercury, Venus and probably the Earth will be swallowed up by it. During this phase the Sun will be burning the helium it has, but when that runs out (in about 100 million years) it will start to pulse and eventually blow away its outer material and become a white dwarf (about the size of Earth). Over about another trillion years it will cool down until it is the same temperature as most of the Universe, a few degrees above absolute zero.

    Luckily, we have about 6 billion years until the Sun runs out of hydrogen and starts to die.

    -Christina

    You are not authorized to post a reply.


    Twitter Feed

    Scientist Leaderboard

    Name # of replies
    Multiverse skin is based on Greytness by Adammer