The Great Gig in the Sky - The Life and Times of the Sun.
Created | Updated Jan 28, 2002
The last time i heard about it, the beginning of the universe was pegged at 15 billion years from today. I hope the hubble telescope has not trashed that theory as yet. The Universe began with a bang. Since it is unlikely that we will meet a bang bigger than the one that began the universe, this initial bang is The Big Bang.
In a nutshell - "A super dense blob of matter and energy exploded releasing super hot matter and a lot of radiation. As this matter and energy cooled, celestial bodies were formed. In an unremarkable galaxy, an unremarkable star was formed with a few insignificant planets orbiting that star. This star was the sun. Its birth would be at least 4.5-5 billion years in the past. (This also is about the time the earth was born.)"
Here is a very short fact sheet on the sun,
1. The sun is about 8 light minutes away from us, that's about
8*60*300,000 ie 144,000,000 kilometers or about 90,000,000 miles.
2. It is an average star, not too small, not too large, it is 865000 miles in diameter (qouted from the A301870).
3. I don't know the mass, density etc. It is critical info and can be gathered best from the site
http://www.corvus.com/planets/planets.htm
How does it work
One could say - "Nuclear Fusion" and be done with the working of the sun. But frankly, here is the interesting part. In the story of man's discovery of the sun lies the story of man discovering himself.
In the prehistoric and the ancient world the sun was worshipped as god, as light, as good. Darkness has forever been regarded as evil. For good reason, the sun is the ultimate source of all energy on the earth, no life is possible without it.
This is that huge part of our history when the sun was beyond our understanding. It is only in the last two or three centuries that any credible understanding of the sun emerged. Interestingly, the initial theories proposed on the working of the sun included one saying that the sun was a mass of burning coal. Not surprising if you consider that steam once ruled the earth. No force as useful as the newfound engine was known to man. Coal could in those times explain everything. In due course this and similar theories were discredited as infeasible simply because conventional chemical processes could not account for the sun's radiance.
The true understanding of the sun has its roots in the theory of relativity put forward by Einstien. This was (i think) 1905, in the special theory of relativity, when the equivalence of mass and energy were proposed. It was the first step in understanding the sun's power and lead to the conclusion that the sun works on Nuclear Fusion - by converting hydrogen into helium. A process similar to the one applied in a hydrogen Bomb.
And here's how it all started.
The sun was made (like any other star) out of big clouds of gases coming together. As the sun agglomerated the various particles that came together to form it started to pull one another into a gravitational collapse. This crushing of particles under their own attraction led to collisions that pushed the temperature on the sun tremendously. The rising temperature started to cause fusion of the hydrogen atoms into helium atoms with the release of a lot of energy (this is a hot process, really really hot). This energy release and rise in temeprature countered the gravitational crushing and the sun (like any other star) became a delicate balance of two catastrophic and incredibly powerful forces. This is exactly where it stands today.
The End
If there is anything that is inevitable in this universe, it is the ultimate triumph of gravity over everything else. There is some doubt on that today though, but that concerns the big bang leading to never ending expansion or big bang leading to big crunch dilemma. That doesn't concern us directly for what gravity will do to the sun is clear. The future for the sun is (forgive the pun) - not very bright. Some day (sorry), about another 4 billion years from now, the sun will have used up all its hydrogen to get helium. The helium will simply sit there, unable to fuse. The process will no longer be powerful enough to hold the balance with gravity. The core of the sun will start to collapse, but its outer skin will expand into a giant - a red giant.
(For more details on the science one can go to the site :
http://www.sciencenet.org.uk/database/Physics/Stars/p01157c.html)
The earth will be consumed into the expanding sun. The outer shell of the sun will then explode and move away. The core will collapse further into a superdense cold star - the white dwarf. If the mass is high enough it will be a neutron star. No one seriously believes that the mass of the sun is high enough for it to become a black hole.
That is one way to look at the sun. But by no means is this the only way to look at it. The sun offers a lot more interesting phenomena.
The Sun's Magnetism - a primer.
There is a lot to know about the sun. Apart from its origins and its destiny, the sun's present is also a big mystery for astronomers. Its magnetism, solar flares, sun spots and solar winds are all hot topics (sorry again) for study. That's because they effect the earth in ways that are still not completely understood or predictable.
The sun is made up of high velocity plasma (charged particles moving around). This movement leads to magnetism in the sun, exactly like a wire turned around an iron object magnetises on the passage of electricity. Or lets just simply say that a moving charge is a magnetic personality. As a consequence, the sun is cris-crossed by magnetic lines of force. (The kind of shapes that iron filings around a bar magnet would take.) Sometimes these lines of force attract matter out of the sun and push it high into space in spectacular flares. These flares are best observed during a complete eclipse against a dark centre of the sun, they can be seen emerging brilliantly from the edge. Eight minutes (the time it takes light to travel to the earth from the sun) after a big flare the earth is hit by electromagnetic storms that disrupt radio communication and power supply and the functioning of electronic equipment. This is Electromagnetic radiation from the suns flare.
Solar winds are streams of charged particles given out by the sun. (these produce the aurorae at the polar latitudes).
Sun spots are dark spots on the sun. Associated with cooler areas on the sun, the spots have some relation to the magnetism on the sun, but the exact nature is not clear to me. It has however been observed that sunspots (and in fact the sun in general) follow a twelve year cycle of activity wherein the activity waxes and wanes.
Lastly, the tailpiece, "the sun gives the comets their tails."
see ya... (incidentally, that again is because of the sun)
In a nutshell - "A super dense blob of matter and energy exploded releasing super hot matter and a lot of radiation. As this matter and energy cooled, celestial bodies were formed. In an unremarkable galaxy, an unremarkable star was formed with a few insignificant planets orbiting that star. This star was the sun. Its birth would be at least 4.5-5 billion years in the past. (This also is about the time the earth was born.)"
Here is a very short fact sheet on the sun,
1. The sun is about 8 light minutes away from us, that's about
8*60*300,000 ie 144,000,000 kilometers or about 90,000,000 miles.
2. It is an average star, not too small, not too large, it is 865000 miles in diameter (qouted from the A301870).
3. I don't know the mass, density etc. It is critical info and can be gathered best from the site
http://www.corvus.com/planets/planets.htm
How does it work
One could say - "Nuclear Fusion" and be done with the working of the sun. But frankly, here is the interesting part. In the story of man's discovery of the sun lies the story of man discovering himself.
In the prehistoric and the ancient world the sun was worshipped as god, as light, as good. Darkness has forever been regarded as evil. For good reason, the sun is the ultimate source of all energy on the earth, no life is possible without it.
This is that huge part of our history when the sun was beyond our understanding. It is only in the last two or three centuries that any credible understanding of the sun emerged. Interestingly, the initial theories proposed on the working of the sun included one saying that the sun was a mass of burning coal. Not surprising if you consider that steam once ruled the earth. No force as useful as the newfound engine was known to man. Coal could in those times explain everything. In due course this and similar theories were discredited as infeasible simply because conventional chemical processes could not account for the sun's radiance.
The true understanding of the sun has its roots in the theory of relativity put forward by Einstien. This was (i think) 1905, in the special theory of relativity, when the equivalence of mass and energy were proposed. It was the first step in understanding the sun's power and lead to the conclusion that the sun works on Nuclear Fusion - by converting hydrogen into helium. A process similar to the one applied in a hydrogen Bomb.
And here's how it all started.
The sun was made (like any other star) out of big clouds of gases coming together. As the sun agglomerated the various particles that came together to form it started to pull one another into a gravitational collapse. This crushing of particles under their own attraction led to collisions that pushed the temperature on the sun tremendously. The rising temperature started to cause fusion of the hydrogen atoms into helium atoms with the release of a lot of energy (this is a hot process, really really hot). This energy release and rise in temeprature countered the gravitational crushing and the sun (like any other star) became a delicate balance of two catastrophic and incredibly powerful forces. This is exactly where it stands today.
The End
If there is anything that is inevitable in this universe, it is the ultimate triumph of gravity over everything else. There is some doubt on that today though, but that concerns the big bang leading to never ending expansion or big bang leading to big crunch dilemma. That doesn't concern us directly for what gravity will do to the sun is clear. The future for the sun is (forgive the pun) - not very bright. Some day (sorry), about another 4 billion years from now, the sun will have used up all its hydrogen to get helium. The helium will simply sit there, unable to fuse. The process will no longer be powerful enough to hold the balance with gravity. The core of the sun will start to collapse, but its outer skin will expand into a giant - a red giant.
(For more details on the science one can go to the site :
http://www.sciencenet.org.uk/database/Physics/Stars/p01157c.html)
The earth will be consumed into the expanding sun. The outer shell of the sun will then explode and move away. The core will collapse further into a superdense cold star - the white dwarf. If the mass is high enough it will be a neutron star. No one seriously believes that the mass of the sun is high enough for it to become a black hole.
That is one way to look at the sun. But by no means is this the only way to look at it. The sun offers a lot more interesting phenomena.
The Sun's Magnetism - a primer.
There is a lot to know about the sun. Apart from its origins and its destiny, the sun's present is also a big mystery for astronomers. Its magnetism, solar flares, sun spots and solar winds are all hot topics (sorry again) for study. That's because they effect the earth in ways that are still not completely understood or predictable.
The sun is made up of high velocity plasma (charged particles moving around). This movement leads to magnetism in the sun, exactly like a wire turned around an iron object magnetises on the passage of electricity. Or lets just simply say that a moving charge is a magnetic personality. As a consequence, the sun is cris-crossed by magnetic lines of force. (The kind of shapes that iron filings around a bar magnet would take.) Sometimes these lines of force attract matter out of the sun and push it high into space in spectacular flares. These flares are best observed during a complete eclipse against a dark centre of the sun, they can be seen emerging brilliantly from the edge. Eight minutes (the time it takes light to travel to the earth from the sun) after a big flare the earth is hit by electromagnetic storms that disrupt radio communication and power supply and the functioning of electronic equipment. This is Electromagnetic radiation from the suns flare.
Solar winds are streams of charged particles given out by the sun. (these produce the aurorae at the polar latitudes).
Sun spots are dark spots on the sun. Associated with cooler areas on the sun, the spots have some relation to the magnetism on the sun, but the exact nature is not clear to me. It has however been observed that sunspots (and in fact the sun in general) follow a twelve year cycle of activity wherein the activity waxes and wanes.
Lastly, the tailpiece, "the sun gives the comets their tails."
see ya... (incidentally, that again is because of the sun)
