THE SUN - OUR STAR & THE FUSION INSIDE THE SUN (PART 5)

 THE SUN : OUR STAR

 

Hello my wings, I hope you all are happy and healthy and reading my blogs regularly.

According to Hindu, Panch-tatva (five elements) are very necessary for life, whether its a complex or simple organism.

Panch-tatva are:

prithvi(earth),  Jal(water), agni(fire/sun), Vayu(air), akash(space).

So lets jump on the topic SUN : OUR ONLY NEAREST STAR.

once thought to be exceptional, our sun is now known to be ordinary and rather nondescript star situated on the outskirts of an average galaxy.

it is easy to understand how successive generations held the sun in particular esteem - it is the source of life on Earth; it warm ups the world and give sunlight during our daytime.

Nevertheless, in the grand scheme of the universe, the sun is another middle-aged, main Sequence star. Its stellar classification, G2, denoting yellowish coloring and its surface temperatures 5000-6000 degrees kelvin, is not extraordinary either; there are countless G2- type stars. Perhaps the sun's only distinction might prove to be that one of its planet harbor intelligent life.

FACTS TO KNOW:

Sunlight on the moon is much brighter than that on earth, due to the moon's lack of atmosphere. The seven Apollo landings all occurred during the early lunar mornings. This allowed the astronauts to spot craters and boulders more easily, without the harsh sunlight during the day. 

Distance from Earth to the Sun = 14,95,97,000 Km

Sun's diameter = 13,90,400 Km (109 Earths would fit across the sun's disc.)

FUSION INSIDE SUN :

 Initially it was thought that the sun was just one giant ball of fire, burning much like candle. This theory is not tenable, because if the sun was burning like a candle, it would have been exhausted years ago. Another theory suggested that the sun's huge gravitational pull, the result of its large mass, was being converted in to energy. Again, this does not account for the age of sun, which must be more than 4.6 billion years old, the age of the oldest known rocks on the Earth.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the German born Jewish physicist Albert Einstein finally provided the answer when he stated that mass ans energy were interchangeable, E = mc^2, where E is energy, m is mass, and c is speed of the light. In the sun, hydrogen nuclei collide with one another to create helium atoms.

In this process, named fusion, mass is transferred to energy. Fortunately for our descendants, this process will continue for some million years to come, until the last of the hydrogen in sun is used up.

FACTS TO KNOW :

The sun is massive nuclear fusion reactor. The core(white) has a temperature of at least 14 million degrees Celsius where hydrogen atoms fuse into helium to release heat and light energy. At the surface(red) is the photo sphere, about 300 Km thick. Its constant output of energy means that the sun looses about 4 million tons of mass each second.

My next blog will be on Solar Atmosphere and Solar layers. So don't miss out!

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