The Sun

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The Sun

The sun is the largest object in the solar system. It is a middle-sized star and there are many other stars out in the universe just like it. Even though it is only a middle-sized star it is large enough to hold over 1 million Earth’s inside if it were hollow. The temperature on the sun is far too much for any living thing to bear. On the surface it is 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit and the core is a stunning 27,000,000 degrees Fahrenheit. But don’t worry we are over 90,000 million miles away, the sun could never reach us, at least not yet. The sun is a still a middle aged star and later in its life it will become a Red Giant. In this stage it will get bigger, and closer to us causing a temperature increase and most likely the end of the world as we know it, but this will not take place for quite some time.

But the sun is not our enemy, if it weren’t for that big ball of burning gas there would be no life on this planet at all. We need its heat, its light, and its energy. Without these our planet would be frozen over like a big ice cube and there would be no signs or traces of life ever. In total amount the sun provides about 2 pounds of energy to us every day. Yes, that’s right only 2 pounds. The sun evaporates water from the earth’s lakes, streams, and rivers. It also heats the earth and cools the earth at the same time. Without the Earth’s atmosphere to protect us from the sun’s ultraviolet rays we would be toast. This is kind of how the greenhouse effect takes place. The greenhouse effect is when the atmosphere of the earth traps heat from the sun and lets sunlight heat plants, yet prevents much of the heat from getting out. In a similar way, the atmosphere lets sunlight through to the surface of the earth. The sunlight warms the earth, but the heat that created cannot easily pass back through the atmosphere into space.

Now what is going on in the sun? When we look up we just see a bright object that makes us warm, sometimes gives us sunburn and gives us light, on the contrary. The sun is a mass of incandescent gas, a gigantic nuclear furnace where hydrogen is built into helium at a temperature of millions of degrees. The sun is so hot that everything on it is a gas. About 75% of the sun is made up of hydrogen, about 23% is helium and the remaining percent consist of iron, copper, aluminum, and about 70 more elements that are comm...

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... as Stonehenge, to see the suns shadow and tell the time of day. Ancient people also used the sun to tell directions, they knew that it rose in the east and set in the west everyday, and that one whole day was the time it took the sun to get from one edge of the horizon to the other. Ancient calendars were based on the phases of the moon. The phases occur because sunlight reflected by the moon is seen from different angles as the moon circles the earth. Even today the sun has an important role in surveying and navigating people. Surveyors can use the sun to calculate their own position and other positions on the earth.

Well, that about does it as a summary for the sun. Even though this essay may have brought out some true facts about the sun there is still much more to know about the sun. Some stuff we don’t even know about the sun and may never know, but what we do know is good. We know that it is the largest object in the solar system, it is the size of 1 million earth’s and it hotter than 27,000,000 in the core, now that’s cooking.

Bibliography

1. The World Book Encyclopedia, “sun” Robert W. Noyes

2. Why the sun shines

3. Science Book

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