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Last Post 10/4/2006 9:38 AM by Sarah Gibson

Facts about the sun

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Anonymous

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10/4/2006 7:49 AM
How can people figure out how much the sun weighs?

Anonymous

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10/4/2006 8:08 AM
i dont think that u can weigh the sun, as there is no gravity. but, what do i know, im not a scientist. :-) Kev

Sarah Gibson

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10/4/2006 9:38 AM
Hi thats a good question. Although we cannot actually weigh the Sun with a scale, we can compute its weight by studying the way it affects other objects, like the Earth. We do know that it contains virtually all the mass in our solar system! We can also understand this better by making some comparisons. Since the Sun is so much more massive than the Earth (over 300,000 times heavier) its gravitational pull is also much larger. A child that weighs 75 pounds on Earth would weigh about a ton on the Sun. The weight increases by a factor of 30. (Of course, we cannot really stand on the Sun, for it is too hot and has no solid surface.) cheers, Sarah