Contents
Is the Sun privately owned
The Sun is a British tabloid newspaper, published by the News Group Newspapers division of News UK, itself a wholly owned subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.
Has anyone claimed ownership of the Sun?
Woman Claims to Own the Sun A woman that says she’s taking advantage of international law has staked a claim on the sun. You know that big red ball of fire in the sky that heats you up on a hot day and appears useless but still keeps you alive on a cold one? Yeah, the Sun? Well, that 4.5 billion year old star now has a new owner, and it isn’t god, so get ready for a huge increase in your heating bill.
- Angeles Duran of Spain, 49, recently filed for and was granted what she says is legal ownership of the Sun.
- The U.N.’s states that “outer space is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means.” Duran says this means that countries cannot claim celestial bodies, but individuals are still free to do so.
She apparently registered ownership of the Sun with a local notary public and is now in possession of an official document that states she is the “owner of the Sun, a star of spectral type G2, located in the centre of the solar system, located at an average distance from Earth of about 149,600,000 kilometres.” Duran’s claim is similar to one made decades ago.
- Dennis Hope did the same thing as Duran in 1980, but with the Moon.
- Hope has actually earned money off of his claim by selling acres of land on the Moon to rubes, generating millions of dollars, though it might not be as easy for Duran to do the same thing.
- Who the hell wants to own something that’ll burn you from millions of miles away? Neither claim is officially recognized by the U.N.
Duran says: “There was no snag, I backed my claim legally, I am not stupid, I know the law. I did it but anyone else could have done it, it simply occurred to me first.” She plans on charging a fee to anyone that “uses the Sun,” giving half to Spain, 20% to Spain’s pension fund, 10% to research, 10% towards ending world hunger, and she’s keeping the remainder for herself.
Good luck collecting. It wasn’t mentioned what Duran meant by “using the Sun,” so she could attempt to siphon funds from either Kindergartners or astronomers. It’s nice that Duran wants to end world hunger, but if this generates a single penny for her I’ll be really upset. You don’t own the Sun, Ms. Duran, so just knock it off,
Then again, it would be nice to own an acre of Sun for when I retire, just in case she actually does. Source: : Woman Claims to Own the Sun
How old will the Sun last?
How long will the Sun shine? – If our Sun is four and a half billion years old, how much longer will it shine? Stars like our Sun burn for about nine or 10 billion years. So our Sun is about halfway through its life. But don’t worry. It still has about 5,000,000,000—five billion—years to go. article last updated May 25, 2021
What is Earths price
Final Thoughts: How Much Would It Cost to Buy the World? – According to astrophysicist and astronomer Greg Laughlin, the Earth cost five quadrillion USD. It’s an interesting take on the monetary value of our home planet. However, ecologists say Earth’s actual cost goes beyond a dollar amount to include the environmental and cultural valuations.
How much left for the Sun?
How long will the Sun shine? – If our Sun is four and a half billion years old, how much longer will it shine? Stars like our Sun burn for about nine or 10 billion years. So our Sun is about halfway through its life. But don’t worry. It still has about 5,000,000,000—five billion—years to go. article last updated May 25, 2021
How many people buy the Sun?
The Sun is the most widely read commercial newsbrand in the UK in print and online according to new data from industry audience body Pamco. The News UK -owned red top no longer publishes its print sales figures (ABC) but it has released a readership estimate from Pamco, which shows it is just ahead of the Daily Mail.
- Pamco (which stands for Publishers Audience Measurement Company) estimates print readership on a trailing 18-month basis to December 2022 through a survey that has 22,000 participants.
- On this basis Pamco puts The Sun’s print readership at 6,174,000 per month versus the Daily Mail on 6,169,000.
- Given the figures are estimates based on a survey the two titles are effectively in a dead heat on print readership.
Overall, Pamco estimates that The Sun reaches 31.1m readers a month, 21.9m weekly and 8.7m readers daily in print and online. According to ABC the Daily Mail is the best-selling newspaper in the UK with 683,000 sales per day Monday to Friday and 1.3 million on a Saturday,
Why is Rupert Murdoch so rich
Rupert Murdoch AC KCSG | |
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Murdoch in 2012 | |
Born | Keith Rupert Murdoch 11 March 1931 (age 92) Melbourne, Victoria, Australia |
Citizenship |
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Education | Worcester College, Oxford ( BA ) |
Occupations |
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Years active | 1952−2023 |
Known for |
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Board member of |
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Spouses | Patricia Booker ( m.1956; div.1967) Anna Maria Torv ( m.1967; div.1999) Wendi Deng ( m.1999; div.2013) Jerry Hall ( m.2016; div.2022) |
Children | 6, including Prudence, Elisabeth, Lachlan, and James |
Parents |
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Relatives |
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Family | Murdoch family |
Awards | Companion of the Order of Australia (1984) |
Notes | |
^ Australian citizenship lost in 1985 (under S17 of Australian Citizenship Act 1948 ) with acquisition of US citizenship. |
Keith Rupert Murdoch AC KCSG ( MUR -dok ; born 11 March 1931) is an Australian-born American business magnate, media proprietor, and investor. Through his company News Corp, he is the owner of hundreds of local, national, and international publishing outlets around the world, including in the UK ( The Sun and The Times ), in Australia ( The Daily Telegraph, Herald Sun, and The Australian ), in the US ( The Wall Street Journal and the New York Post ), book publisher HarperCollins, and the television broadcasting channels Sky News Australia and Fox News (through the Fox Corporation ).
He was also the owner of Sky (until 2018), 21st Century Fox ( until 2019 ), and the now-defunct News of the World, With a net worth of US$21.7 billion as of 2 March 2022, Murdoch is the 31st richest person in the United States and the 71st richest in the world according to Forbes magazine. After his father ‘s death in 1952, Murdoch took over the running of The News, a small Adelaide newspaper owned by his father.
In the 1950s and 1960s, Murdoch acquired a number of newspapers in Australia and New Zealand before expanding into the United Kingdom in 1969, taking over the News of the World, followed closely by The Sun, In 1974, Murdoch moved to New York City, to expand into the US market; however, he retained interests in Australia and the UK.
- In 1981, Murdoch bought The Times, his first British broadsheet, and, in 1985, became a naturalized US citizen, giving up his Australian citizenship, to satisfy the legal requirement for US television network ownership.
- In 1986, keen to adopt newer electronic publishing technologies, Murdoch consolidated his UK printing operations in London, causing bitter industrial disputes.
His holding company News Corporation acquired Twentieth Century Fox (1985), HarperCollins (1989), and The Wall Street Journal (2007). Murdoch formed the British broadcaster BSkyB in 1990 and, during the 1990s, expanded into Asian networks and South American television.
- By 2000, Murdoch’s News Corporation owned more than 800 companies in more than 50 countries, with a net worth of more than $5 billion.
- In July 2011, Murdoch faced allegations that his companies, including the News of the World, owned by News Corporation, had been regularly hacking the phones of celebrities, royalty, and public citizens.
Murdoch faced police and government investigations into bribery and corruption by the British government and FBI investigations in the US. On 21 July 2012, Murdoch resigned as a director of News International, In September 2023, Murdoch announced he would be stepping down as chairman of Fox Corp.
How much is the Sun newspaper 2023?
UK national newspaper cover prices, 2013-2023
2013 | 2023 | |
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Sunday Mirror | £1.00 | £2.20 |
Sunday People | £1.00 | £2.20 |
The Sun | £0.40 | £0.80 |
The Sun (Saturday) | £0.50 |
Who owns the Daily Star
Daily Star Sunday Newspaper Daily Star Sunday TypeFormatOwner(s)PublisherEditorDenis MannFounded15 September 2002 ; 21 years ago ( 2002-09-15 ) Headquarters, 80,847 (as of July 2023) Website The Daily Star Sunday is a weekly published in the United Kingdom.
- It was launched as a sister title to the on 15 September 2002.
- The Daily Star Sunday is published by, which along with the Daily Star also publishes the and Sunday Express,
- The group was formerly owned by ‘s company but is now part of (formerly Trinity Mirror).
- The paper predominantly features stories about celebrities, sport, and news and about popular television programmes, such as soap operas and reality TV shows.
The current editor is Denis Mann, who replaced Stuart James after Reach plc took control of the title in 2018.
What will happen if there is no sun?
The sun is the most inhospitable and hostile place imaginable: glowing hot, deadly radiation and devouring everything that enters its realm. Nevertheless, its light is considered the source of life on earth. How does that work together? – The sun is a huge nuclear reactor in the center of our solar system.
Over a billion-years, hydrogen converted to helium at the core of the sun where the temperature is an unbelievable 15 million°C. A massive amount of energy is continuously released. It flows as radiation from the surface into space, warms our planet and sets in motion many chemical and physical processes.Without sunlight, it would be bleak on earth.
There wouldn’t be any plants, animals and people. There would be no other form of life. No fossil energy sources such as coal, oil and natural gas would be available to generate energy. The sun keeps the engine running for the water cycle: evaporation → cloud formation → precipitation.
And it shapes the weather on earth by heating the earth’s surface to varying degrees. Wind and hydropower plants? Solar power systems? Without sun, these wouldn’t work. Light: brighter than a million light bulbs Without sunlight, it would be completely dark on earth. We owe our daylight to the fact that every square meter on the sun shines brighter than a million light bulbs.
Once sunlight hits the earth, it scatters in the atmosphere. We would also have to sacrifice romantic nights when the moon is full. We wouldn’t see our earth’s companion since it doesn’t shine its own light, but only reflects light from the sun. Without the sun there would be no vegetation on earth, because every plant needs light to live and grow.
The sun even enables them to generate oxygen by means of photosynthesis, which humans and animals need to breathe. Warmth: not too much and not too little The earth’s position in the solar system is optimal for the development of life. It is exactly the right distance from the sun. It is just far enough away to keep us from burning.
And we get the amount of warmth needed for humans, animals and plants to live. If the sun would go out, no life could survive on most of earth’s surface within a few weeks. Water and air would freeze over into sheets of ice. The sun sustains all life on earth, it shines on us, warms the earth, the seas, the atmosphere, it influences the climate, it causes dry periods and ice ages, it causes wind, which blows over the earth and determines our weather. Sun, the glowing star in the sky. For us on earth, it is a source of life. Even in Antarctica, the coldest place on our planet, temperatures seldom drop below minus 50°C. Without the sun’s radiation, the temperature would be anywhere near the absolute zero of minus 273°C. Life would have never continued nor even have come into existence.
Rain: a never-ending cycle Wind: air in motion
It’s always raining somewhere in the world. By the way, the place with the highest rainfall in the world is in Hawaii: at Mount Wai’ale’ale on the island of Kauai, it rains an average of 335 days a year with 12,000 millimeters of raindrops per square meter!Rivers are constantly carrying rain water back to the ocean.
Why doesn’t the ocean sometimes overflow? You guessed it, the sun is responsible. All the earth’s water flows in a cycle. The warm rays of the sun evaporate the water from the earth’s surface, including the ocean’s water. That’s why the sea level stays the same all the time. The vapor rises until there is colder air.
Then tiny droplets settle on dust particles and form clouds.If the cloud becomes too heavy or hits a mountain, the water falls as rain on the ground. Seas, rivers and lakes are replenished. The water that falls to the ground seeps into the groundwater and then flows into the rivers — or evaporates from buildings, roads and all sealed surfaces becoming a part of the water cycle again.In fact, wind can only exist with the sun.
The sun doesn’t heat the earth evenly. Some air in the atmosphere heats up faster than other depending on the latitude. Also, there are significant temperature differences between the different layers of air.Warm air masses act like a magnet and attract cold air. The movement of air masses give rise to winds and depending on the strength, we experience a light breeze, high winds, or a dangerous storm.
Over the ocean, winds constantly blow at varying strengths, sometimes lighter sometimes stronger. This is also caused by the sun. When the sun shines, the air heats up faster over land than over the ocean. The warmer air expands and rises. Cold air flows into the empty space that has been created at the surface.
This movement of air mass is what we experience as wind.On a side note: At night, it cools down faster on land compared to the ocean. That’s why the wind direction turns at night and blows towards the ocean. With the support of BASF, Jacob Beautemps from Breaking Lab took a closer look at where the immense power of the sun actually comes from.
Take a look, it’s huge. (Video in German language) : No sun, no life on earth
Does the Sun benefit the Earth?
Without the Sun, Earth’s land, water, and air would all be frozen solid! Life on Earth would cease to exist. That’s because almost all living things rely on the steady light and heat of the Sun. The Sun’s heat makes liquid water on our planet possible.
Why does the Sun have gold
Natural Gold Formation – While nuclear fusion within the Sun makes many elements, the Sun cannot synthesize gold. The considerable energy required to make gold only occurs when stars explode in a supernova or when neutron stars collide, Under these extreme conditions, heavy elements form via the rapid neutron-capture process or r-process.
How much is sun getting bigger?
Although it shines almost perfectly constantly, the Sun imperceptibly changes over time. A solar flare from our Sun, which ejects matter out away from our parent star and into the Solar System, can trigger events like coronal mass ejections. Although the particles typically take ~3 days to arrive, the most energetic events can reach Earth in under 24 hours, and can cause the most damage to our electronics and electrical infrastructure. This cutaway showcases the various regions of the surface and interior of the Sun, including the core, which is where nuclear fusion occurs. As time goes on, the region of the core where nuclear fusion takes place expands, causing the Sun’s energy output to increase. The changes in a one solar-mass star’s luminosity, radius, and temperature over its lifetime, from the start of nuclear fusion in its core 4.56 billion years ago until its transition into a full-fledged red giant, which is the beginning of the end for Sun-like stars. ( Credit : RJHall/Wikimedia Commons) Today, the still-growing Sun is about 14% bigger than at birth. The present sizes of the planets, today, remain unchanged compared to their sizes 4.5 billion years ago, in the early stages of the Solar System. The Sun, however, has grown by a significant margin over that time. In the earliest stages of our Solar System, you could line up only 96 Earth’s across the diameter of the Sun. When stars fuse hydrogen to helium in their core, they live along the main sequence: the snaky line that runs from lower-right to upper-left. As their cores run out of hydrogen, they become subgiants: hotter, more luminous, cooler, and larger. Procyon, the 8th brightest star in the night sky, is a subgiant star. After its formation some 4.6 billion years ago, the Sun has grown in radius by approximately 14%. It will continue to grow, doubling in size when it becomes a subgiant, but it will increase in size by more than ~100-fold when it becomes a true red giant in another ~7-8 billion years, total. As the Sun becomes a true red giant, the Earth itself may be swallowed or engulfed (Mercury and Venus definitely will), but will certainly be roasted as never before. The Sun’s outer layers will swell to more than 100 times their present diameter, but the exact details of its evolution, and how those changes will affect the orbits of the planets, still have large uncertainties in them. The dying red giant star, R Sculptoris, exhibits a very unusual set of ejecta when viewed in millimeter and submillimeter wavelengths: revealing a spiral structure. This is thought to be due to the presence of a binary companion: something our own Sun lacks but that approximately half of the stars in the Universe possess. This compact, symmetric, bipolar nebula with X-shaped spikes is known to have a binary system at its core, and is at the end of its asymptotic giant branch phase of life. It has begun to form a preplanetary nebula, and its unusual shape is caused by a combination of winds, outflows, ejecta, and the central binary at its core. Near the end of a Sun-like star’s life, it begins to blow off its outer layers into the depths of space, forming a protoplanetary nebula like the Egg Nebula, seen here. Its outer layers have not yet been heated to sufficient temperatures by the central, contracting star to create a true planetary nebula just yet. When the central star heats up to about temperatures of ~30,000 K, it becomes hot enough to ionize the previously ejected material from a dying star, creating a true planetary nebulae. Here, NGC 7027 has just recently crossed that threshold, and is still rapidly expanding. Normally, a planetary nebula will appear similar to the Cat’s Eye Nebula, shown here. A central core of expanding gas is lit up brightly by the central white dwarf, while the diffuse outer regions continue to expand, illuminated far more faintly. The extended halo of matter beyond the typical planetary nebula was formed over ~100,000 years, due to previously ejected material. From their earliest beginnings to their final extent before fading away, stars will grow from the size of the Sun to the size of a red giant (the Earth’s orbit) to up to ~5 light-years in diameter, typically. The largest known planetary nebulae can reach approximately double that size, up to ~10 light-years across. One of the largest planetary nebulae known at nearly 10 light-years in diameter, Sharpless 2-188 is still expanding, but isn’t as asymmetric as it appears. Its fast velocity relative to the interstellar medium, which is also full of gas, gives the asymmetric appearance, but the nebula itself is nearly spherical in shape. This animation shows how significant the fading of the Stingray Nebula has been since 1996. Note the background star, just to the upper left of the central, fading white dwarf, which remains constant over time, which confirms that the nebula itself is dimming significantly. The interstellar medium, normally invisible except for the light it absorbs, can become illuminated by either reflecting starlight or being excited and emitting its own light. Here, the previously-enriched interstellar medium is revealed by the hot, new stars in a central young star cluster.
How many times is the Sun bigger than the Earth?
The Sun is 864,400 miles (1,391,000 kilometers) across. This is about 109 times the diameter of Earth. The Sun weighs about 333,000 times as much as Earth. It is so large that about 1,300,000 planet Earths can fit inside of it.
Does sun have any charge?
However, the Sun, like any plasma structure that has free electrons in it, is charged with a positive charge.
Who owns the sun in space?
Woman Claims to Own the Sun A woman that says she’s taking advantage of international law has staked a claim on the sun. You know that big red ball of fire in the sky that heats you up on a hot day and appears useless but still keeps you alive on a cold one? Yeah, the Sun? Well, that 4.5 billion year old star now has a new owner, and it isn’t god, so get ready for a huge increase in your heating bill.
Angeles Duran of Spain, 49, recently filed for and was granted what she says is legal ownership of the Sun. The U.N.’s states that “outer space is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means.” Duran says this means that countries cannot claim celestial bodies, but individuals are still free to do so.
She apparently registered ownership of the Sun with a local notary public and is now in possession of an official document that states she is the “owner of the Sun, a star of spectral type G2, located in the centre of the solar system, located at an average distance from Earth of about 149,600,000 kilometres.” Duran’s claim is similar to one made decades ago.
Dennis Hope did the same thing as Duran in 1980, but with the Moon. Hope has actually earned money off of his claim by selling acres of land on the Moon to rubes, generating millions of dollars, though it might not be as easy for Duran to do the same thing. Who the hell wants to own something that’ll burn you from millions of miles away? Neither claim is officially recognized by the U.N.
Duran says: “There was no snag, I backed my claim legally, I am not stupid, I know the law. I did it but anyone else could have done it, it simply occurred to me first.” She plans on charging a fee to anyone that “uses the Sun,” giving half to Spain, 20% to Spain’s pension fund, 10% to research, 10% towards ending world hunger, and she’s keeping the remainder for herself.
- Good luck collecting.
- It wasn’t mentioned what Duran meant by “using the Sun,” so she could attempt to siphon funds from either Kindergartners or astronomers.
- It’s nice that Duran wants to end world hunger, but if this generates a single penny for her I’ll be really upset.
- You don’t own the Sun, Ms.
- Duran, so just knock it off,
Then again, it would be nice to own an acre of Sun for when I retire, just in case she actually does. Source: : Woman Claims to Own the Sun
How does the sun keep working?
Sun The sun is an ordinary star, one of about 100 billion in our galaxy, the Milky Way. The sun has extremely important influences on our planet: It drives weather, ocean currents, seasons, and climate, and makes plant life possible through photosynthesis. Biology, Earth Science, Astronomy, Physics The sun is an ordinary star, one of about 100 billion in our galaxy, the Milky Way. The sun has extremely important influences on our planet: It drives weather, ocean currents, seasons, and climate, and makes plant life possible through photosynthesis,
Without the sun’s heat and light, life on Earth would not exist. About 4.5 billion years ago, the sun began to take shape from a molecular cloud that was mainly composed of hydrogen and helium. A nearby supernova emitted a shockwave, which came in contact with the molecular cloud and energized it. The molecular cloud began to compress, and some regions of gas collapsed under their own gravitational pull,
As one of these regions collapsed, it also began to rotate and heat up from increasing pressure. Much of the hydrogen and helium remained in the center of this hot, rotating mass. Eventually, the gases heated up enough to begin nuclear fusion, and became the sun in our solar system,
- Other parts of the molecular cloud cooled into a disc around the brand-new sun and became planets, asteroids, comets, and other bodies in our solar system.
- The sun is about 150 million kilometers (93 million miles) from Earth.
- This distance, called an astronomical unit (AU), is a standard measure of distance for astronomers and astrophysicists.
An AU can be measured at light speed, or the time it takes for a photon of light to travel from the sun to Earth. It takes light about eight minutes and 19 seconds to reach Earth from the sun. The radius of the sun, or the distance from the very center to the outer limits, is about 700,000 kilometers (432,000 miles).
- That distance is about 109 times the size of Earth’s radius.
- The sun not only has a much larger radius than Earth—it is also much more massive.
- The sun’s mass is more than 333,000 times that of Earth, and contains about 99.8 percent of all of the mass in the entire solar system! Composition The sun is made up of a blazing combination of gases.
These gases are actually in the form of plasma, Plasma is a state of matter similar to gas, but with most of the particles ionized, This means the particles have an increased or reduced number of electrons.About three quarters of the sun is hydrogen, which is constantly fusing together and creating helium by a process called nuclear fusion.
- Helium makes up almost the entire remaining quarter.
- A very small percentage (1.69 percent) of the sun’s mass is made up of other gases and metals: iron, nickel, oxygen, silicon, sulfur, magnesium, carbon, neon, calcium, and chromium This 1.69 percent may seem insignificant, but its mass is still 5,628 times the mass of Earth.The sun is not a solid mass.
It does not have the easily identifiable boundaries of rocky planets like Earth. Instead, the sun is composed of layers made up almost entirely of hydrogen and helium. These gases carry out different functions in each layer, and the sun’s layers are measured by their percentage of the sun’s total radius.
- The sun is permeated and somewhat controlled by a magnetic field,
- The magnetic field is defined by a combination of three complex mechanisms: a circular electric current that runs through the sun, layers of the sun that rotate at different speeds, and the sun’s ability to conduct electricity,
- Near the sun’s equator, magnetic field lines make small loops near the surface.
Magnetic field lines that flow through the poles extend much farther, thousands of kilometers, before returning to the opposite pole. The sun rotates around its own axis, just like Earth. The sun rotates counterclockwise, and takes between 25 and 35 days to complete a single rotation.
- The sun orbits clockwise around the center of the Milky Way.
- Its orbit is between 24,000 and 26,000 light-years away from the galactic center.
- The sun takes about 225 million to 250 million years to orbit one time around the galactic center.
- Electromagnetic Radiation The sun’s energy travels to Earth at the speed of light in the form of electromagnetic radiation (EMR).
The electromagnetic spectrum exists as waves of different frequencies and wavelengths, The frequency of a wave represents how many times the wave repeats itself in a certain unit of time. Waves with very short wavelengths repeat themselves several times in a given unit of time, so they are high-frequency.
In contrast, low-frequency waves have much longer wavelengths. The vast majority of electromagnetic waves that come from the sun are invisible to us. The most high-frequency waves emitted by the sun are gamma rays, x-rays, and ultraviolet radiation (UV rays). The most harmful UV rays are almost completely absorbed by Earth’s atmosphere.
Less potent UV rays travel through the atmosphere, and can cause sunburn. The sun also emits infrared radiation —whose waves are a much lower-frequency. Most heat from the sun arrives as infrared energy. Sandwiched between infrared and UV is the visible spectrum, which contains all the colors we, as humans, can see.
The color red has the longest wavelengths (closest to infrared), and violet (closest to UV) the shortest.The sun itself is white, which means it contains all the colors in the visible spectrum. The sun appears orangish-yellow because the blue light it emits has a shorter wavelength, and is scattered in the atmosphere—the same process that makes the sky appear blue.Astronomers, however, call the sun a “yellow dwarf” star because its colors fall within the yellow-green section of the electromagnetic spectrum.
Evolution of the Sun The sun, although it has sustained all life on our planet, will not shine forever. The sun has already existed for about 4.5 billion years. The process of nuclear fusion, which creates the heat and light that make life on our planet possible, is also the process that slowly changes the sun’s composition.
Through nuclear fusion, the sun is constantly using up the hydrogen in its core : Every second, the sun fuses around 620 million metric tons of hydrogen into helium. At this stage in the sun’s life, its core is about 74 percent hydrogen. Over the next five billion years, the sun will burn through most of its hydrogen, and helium will become its major source of fuel.
Over those five billion years, the sun will go from “yellow dwarf” to ” red giant,” When almost all of the hydrogen in the sun’s core has been consumed, the core will contract and heat up, increasing the amount of nuclear fusion that takes place. The outer layers of the sun will expand from this extra energy.
The sun will expand to about 200 times its current radius, swallowing Mercury and Venus.Astrophysicists debate whether Earth’s orbit would expand beyond the sun’s reach, or if our planet would be engulfed by the sun as well.As the sun expands, it will spread its energy over a larger surface area, which has an overall cooling effect on the star.
This cooling will shift the sun’s visible light to a reddish color—a red giant. Eventually, the sun’s core reaches a temperature of about 100 million on the Kelvin scale (almost 100 million degrees Celsius or 180 million degrees Farenheit), the common scientific scale for measuring temperature.
When it reaches this temperature, helium will begin fusing to create carbon, a much heavier element. This will cause intense solar wind and other solar activity, which will eventually throw off the entire outer layers of the sun. The red giant phase will be over. Only the sun’s carbon core will be left, and as a ” white dwarf,” it will not create or emit energy.
Sun’s Structure The sun is made up of six layers: core, radiative zone, convective zone, photosphere, chromosphere, and corona, Core The sun’s core, more than a thousand times the size of Earth and more than 10 times denser than lead, is a huge furnace.
- Temperatures in the core exceed 15.7 million kelvin (also 15.7 million degrees Celsius, or 28 million degrees Fahrenheit).
- The core extends to about 25 percent of the sun’s radius.The core is the only place where nuclear fusion reactions can happen.
- The sun’s other layers are heated from the nuclear energy created there.
Protons of hydrogen atoms violently collide and fuse, or join together, to create a helium atom.This process, known as a PP (proton-proton) chain reaction, emits an enormous amount of energy. The energy released during one second of solar fusion is far greater than that released in the explosion of hundreds of thousands of hydrogen bombs.
- During nuclear fusion in the core, two types of energy are released: photons and neutrinos,
- These particles carry and emit the light, heat, and energy of the sun.
- Photons are the smallest particle of light and other forms of electromagnetic radiation.
- Neutrinos are more difficult to detect, and only account for about two percent of the sun’s total energy.
The sun emits both photons and neutrinos in all directions, all the time. Radiative Zone The radiative zone of the sun starts at about 25 percent of the radius, and extends to about 70 percent of the radius. In this broad zone, heat from the core cools dramatically, from between seven million K (12 million°F or 7 million°C) to two million K (2 million°C or 4 million°F).In the radiative zone, energy is transferred by a process called thermal radiation.
- During this process, photons that were released in the core travel a short distance, are absorbed by a nearby ion, released by that ion, and absorbed again by another.
- One photon can continue this process for almost 200,000 years! Transition Zone : Tachocline Between the radiative zone and the next layer, the convective zone, there is a transition zone called the tachocline.
This region is created as a result of the sun’s differential rotation,Differential rotation happens when different parts of an object rotate at different velocities. The sun is made up of gases undergoing different processes at different layers and different latitudes.
- The sun’s equator rotates much faster than its poles, for instance.The rotation rate of the sun changes rapidly in the tachocline.
- Convective Zone At around 70 percent of the sun’s radius, the convective zone begins.
- In this zone, the sun’s temperature is not hot enough to transfer energy by thermal radiation.
Instead, it transfers heat by thermal convection through thermal columns.Similar to water boiling in a pot, or hot wax in a lava lamp, gases deep in the sun’s convective zone are heated and “boil” outward, away from the sun’s core, through thermal columns.
- When the gases reach the outer limits of the convective zone, they cool down, and plunge back to the base of the convective zone, to be heated again.
- Photosphere The photosphere is the bright yellow, visible “surface” of the sun.
- The photosphere is about 400 kilometers (250 miles) thick, and temperatures there reach about 6,000K (5,700°C, 10,300°F).
The thermal columns of the convection zone are visible in the photosphere, bubbling like boiling oatmeal. Through powerful telescopes, the tops of the columns appear as granules crowded across the sun. Each granule has a bright center, which is the hot gas rising through a thermal column.
The granules’ dark edges are the cool gas descending back down the column to the bottom of the convective zone. Although the tops of the thermal columns look like small granules, they are usually more than 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) across. Most thermal columns exist for about eight to 20 minutes before they dissolve and form new columns.
There are also “supergranules” that can be up to 30,000 kilometers (18,641 miles) across, and last for up to 24 hours. Sunspots, solar flares, and solar prominences take form in the photosphere, although they are the result of processes and disruptions in other layers of the sun.
- Photosphere: Sunspots A sunspot is just what it sounds like—a dark spot on the sun.
- A sunspot forms when intense magnetic activity in the convective zone ruptures a thermal column.
- At the top of the ruptured column (visible in the photosphere), temperature is temporarily decreased because hot gases are not reaching it.
Photosphere: Solar Flares The process of creating sunspots opens a connection between the corona (the very outer layer of the sun) and the sun’s interior. Solar matter surges out of this opening in formations called solar flares. These explosions are massive: In the period of a few minutes, solar flares release the equivalent of about 160 billion megatons of TNT, or about a sixth of the total energy the sun releases in one second.
Photosphere: Coronal Mass Ejections Photosphere: Solar Prominence Photosphere: Solar Cycle
Coronal mass ejections (CMEs) are another type of solar activity caused by the constant movement and disturbances within the sun’s magnetic field. CMEs typically form near the active regions of sunspots, the correlation between the two has not been proven.
The cause of CMEs is still being studied, and it is hypothesized that disruptions in either the photosphere or corona lead to these violent solar explosions.Solar prominences are bright loops of solar matter. They can burst far into the coronal layer of the sun, expanding hundreds of kilometers per second.
These curved and twisted features can reach hundreds of thousands of kilometers in height and width, and last anywhere from a few days to a few months.Solar prominences are cooler than the corona, and they appear as darker strands against the sun. For this reason, they are also known as filaments.The sun does not constantly emit sunspots and solar ejecta; it goes through a cycle of about 11 years.
- During this solar cycle, the frequency of solar flares changes.
- During solar maximums, there can be several flares per day.
- During solar minimums, there may be fewer than one a week.The solar cycle is defined by the sun’s magnetic fields, which loop around the sun and connect at the two poles.
- Every 11 years, the magnetic fields reverse, causing a disruption that leads to solar activity and sunspots.
The solar cycle can have effects on Earth’s climate. For example, the sun’s ultraviolet light splits oxygen in the stratosphere and strengthens Earth’s protective ozone layer, During the solar minimum, there are low amounts of UV rays, which means that Earth’s ozone layer is temporarily thinned.
- This allows more UV rays to enter and heat Earth’s atmosphere.
- Solar Atmosphere The solar atmosphere is the hottest region of the sun.
- It is made up of the chromosphere, the corona, and a transition zone called the solar transition region that connects the two.
- The solar atmosphere is obscured by the bright light emitted by the photosphere, and it can rarely be seen without special instruments.
Only during solar eclipses, when the moon moves between Earth and the sun and hides the photosphere, can these layers be seen with the unaided eye. Chromosphere The pinkish-red chromosphere is about 2,000 kilometers (1,250 miles) thick and riddled with jets of hot gas.At the bottom of the chromosphere, where it meets the photosphere, the sun is at its coolest, at about 4,400K (4,100°C, 7,500°F).
- This low temperature gives the chromosphere its pink color.
- The temperature in the chromosphere increases with altitude, and reaches 25,000K (25,000°C, 45,000°F) at the outer edge of the region.
- The chromosphere gives off jets of burning gases called spicules, similar to solar flares.
- These fiery wisps of gas reach out from the chromosphere like long, flaming fingers; they are usually about 500 kilometers (310 miles) in diameter.
Spicules only last for about 15 minutes, but can reach thousands of kilometers in height before collapsing and dissolving. Solar Transition Region The solar transition region (STR) separates the chromosphere from the corona.Below the STR, the layers of the sun are controlled and stay separate because of gravity, gas pressure, and the different processes of exchanging energy.
Above the STR, the motion and shape of the layers are much more dynamic. They are dominated by magnetic forces. These magnetic forces can put into action solar events such as coronal loops and the solar wind.The state of helium in these two regions has differences as well. Below the STR, helium is partially ionized.
This means it has lost an electron, but still has one left. Around the STR, helium absorbs a bit more heat and loses its last electron. Its temperature soars to almost one million K (one million°C, 1.8 million°F). Corona The corona is the wispy outermost layer of the solar atmosphere, and can extend millions of kilometers into space.
- Gases in the corona burn at about one million K (one million°C, 1.8 million°F), and move about 145 kilometers (90 miles) per second.
- Some of the particles reach an escape velocity of 400 kilometers per second (249 miles per second).
- They escape the sun’s gravitational pull and become the solar wind.
- The solar wind blasts from the sun to the edge of the solar system.
Other particles form coronal loops. Coronal loops are bursts of particles that curve back around to a nearby sunspot.Near the sun’s poles are coronal holes. These areas are colder and darker than other regions of the sun, and allow some of the fastest-moving parts of the solar wind to pass through.
- Solar Wind The solar wind is a stream of extremely hot, charged particles that are thrown out from the upper atmosphere of the sun.
- This means that every 150 million years, the sun loses a mass equal to that of Earth.
- However, even at this rate of loss, the sun has only lost about 0.01 percent of its total mass from solar wind.The solar wind blows in all directions.
It continues moving at that speed for about 10 billion kilometers (six billion miles). Some of the particles in the solar wind slip through Earth’s magnetic field and into its upper atmosphere near the poles. As they collide with our planet’s atmosphere, these charged particles set the atmosphere aglow with color, creating auroras, colorful light displays known as the Northern and Southern Lights.
- Solar winds can also cause solar storms,
- These storms can interfere with satellites and knock out power grids on Earth.
- The solar wind fills the heliosphere, the massive bubble of charged particles that encompasses the solar system.
- The solar wind eventually slows down near the border of the heliosphere, at a theoretical boundary called the heliopause,
This boundary separates the matter and energy of our solar system from the matter in neighboring star systems and the interstellar medium, The interstellar medium is the space between star systems. The solar wind, having traveled billions of kilometers, cannot extend beyond the interstellar medium.
- Studying the Sun The sun has not always been a subject of scientific discovery and inquiry.
- For thousands of years, the sun was known in cultures all over the world as a god, a goddess, and a symbol of life.To the ancient Aztecs, the sun was a powerful deity known as Tonatiuh, who required human sacrifice to travel across the sky.
In Baltic mythology, the sun was a goddess named Saule, who brought fertility and health. Chinese mythology held that the sun is the only remaining of 10 sun gods.In 150 B.C.E., Greek scholar Claudius Ptolemy created a geocentric model of the solar system in which the moon, planets, and sun revolved around Earth.
It was not until the 16th century that Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus used mathematical and scientific reasoning to prove that planets rotated around the sun. This heliocentric model is the one we use today.In the 17th century, the telescope allowed people to examine the sun in detail. The sun is much too bright to allow us to study it with our eyes unprotected.
With a telescope, it was possible for the first time to project a clear image of the sun onto a screen for examination. English scientist Sir Isaac Newton used a telescope and prism to scatter the light of the sun, and proved that sunlight was actually made of a spectrum of colors.
In 1800, infrared and ultraviolet light were discovered to exist just outside of the visible spectrum. An optical instrument called a spectroscope made it possible to separate visible light and other electromagnetic radiation into its various wavelengths. Spectroscopy also helped scientists identify gases in the sun’s atmosphere—each element has its own wavelength pattern.
However, the method by which the sun generated its energy remained a mystery. Many scientists hypothesized that the sun was contracting, and emitting heat from that process.In 1868, English astronomer Joseph Norman Lockyer was studying the sun’s electromagnetic spectrum.
He observed bright lines in the photosphere that did not have a wavelength of any known element on Earth. He guessed that there was an element isolated on the sun, and named it helium after the Greek sun god, Helios.Over the next 30 years, astronomers concluded that the sun had a hot, pressurized core that was capable of producing massive amounts of energy through nuclear fusion.Technology continued to improve and allowed scientists to uncover new features of the sun.
Infrared telescopes were invented in the 1960s, and scientists observed energy outside the visible spectrum. Twentieth-century astronomers used balloons and rockets to send specialized telescopes high above Earth, and examined the sun without any interference from Earth’s atmosphere.
Solrad 1 was the first spacecraft designed to study the sun, and was launched by the United States in 1960. That decade, NASA sent five Pioneer satellites to orbit the sun and collect information about the star. In 1980, NASA launched a mission during the solar maximum to gather information about the high-frequency gamma rays, UV rays, and x-rays that are emitted during solar flares.
The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory ( SOHO ) was developed in Europe and put into orbit in 1996 to collect information. SOHO has been successfully collecting data and forecasting space weather for 12 years. Voyager 1 and 2 are spacecraft traveling to the edge of the heliosphere to discover what the atmosphere is made of where solar wind meets the interstellar medium.
Voyager 1 crossed this boundary in 2012 and Voyager 2 did so in 2018. Another development in the study of the sun is helioseismology, the study of solar waves. The turbulence of the convective zone is hypothesized to contribute to solar waves that continuously transmit solar material to the outer layers of the sun.
By studying these waves, scientists understand more about the sun’s interior and the cause of solar activity. Energy from the Sun Photosynthesis Sunlight provides necessary light and energy to plants and other producers in the food web, These producers absorb the sun’s radiation and convert it into energy through a process called photosynthesis.
Producers are mostly plants (on land) and algae (in aquatic regions). They are the foundation of the food web, and their energy and nutrients are passed on to every other living organism. Fossil Fuels Photosynthesis is also responsible for all of the fossil fuels on Earth. Scientists estimate that about three billion years ago, the first producers evolved in aquatic settings.
Sunlight allowed plant life to thrive and adapt. After the plants died, they decomposed and shifted deeper into the earth, sometimes thousands of meters. This process continued for millions of years.Under intense pressure and high temperatures, these remains became what we know as fossil fuels.
These microorganisms became petroleum, natural gas, and coal. People have developed processes for extracting these fossil fuels and using them for energy. However, fossil fuels are a nonrenewable resource, They take millions of years to form. Solar Energy Technology Solar energy technology harnesses the sun’s radiation and converts it into heat, light, or electricity.
Solar energy is a renewable resource, and many technologies can harvest it directly for use in homes, businesses, schools, and hospitals. Some solar energy technologies include solar voltaic cells and panels, solar thermal collectors, solar thermal electricity, and solar architecture,
- Photovoltaics use the sun’s energy to speed up electrons in solar cells and generate electricity.
- This form of technology has been used widely, and can provide electricity for rural areas, large power stations, buildings, and smaller devices such as parking meters and trash compactors.
- The sun’s energy can also be harnessed by a method called “concentrated solar power,” in which the sun’s rays are reflected and magnified by mirrors and lenses.
The intensified ray of sunlight heats a fluid, which creates steam and powers an electric generator, Solar power can also be collected and distributed without machinery or electronics. For example, roofs can be covered with vegetation or painted white to decrease the amount of heat absorbed into the building, thereby decreasing the amount of electricity needed for air conditioning.
This is solar architecture. Sunlight is abundant: In one hour, Earth’s atmosphere receives enough sunlight to power the electricity needs of all people for a year. However, solar technology is expensive, and depends on sunny and cloudless local weather to be effective. Methods of harnessing the sun’s energy are still being developed and improved.
Fast Fact Like a Diamond in the Sky White dwarf stars are made of crystallized carbon diamond. A typical white dwarf is about 10 billion trillion trillion carats. In about five billion years, says Travis Metcalfe of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, our sun will become a diamond that truly is forever.
- Fast Fact Solar Constant The solar constant is the average amount of solar energy reaching Earth’s atmosphere.
- The solar constant is about 1.37 kilowatts of electricity per square meter.
- Fast Fact Solarmax 2013 will bring the next solar maximum (solarmax), a period astronomers say will bring more solar flares, coronal mass ejections, solar storms, and auroras.
Fast Fact Sun is the Loneliest Number The sun is pretty isolated, way out on the inner rim of the Orion Arm of the Milky Way. Its nearest stellar neighbor, a red dwarf named Proxima Centauri, is about 4.24 light-years away. Fast Fact Sunny Days at Space Agencies NASA and other space agencies have more than a dozen heliophysics missions, which study the sun, heliosphere, and planetary environments as a single connected system.
A few of the ongoing missions are: : observing particles of solar, interplanetary, interstellar, and galactic origins : determining the causes of the highest-altitude clouds in Earths atmosphere: studying the sun with the worlds highest-resolution solar telescopes: mapping the entire boundary of the solar system: researching gamma rays and X-rays, the most powerful energy emitted by the sun: understanding the structure and dynamics of the sun: a crown jewel of NASA, aimed at developing the scientific understanding necessary to address those aspects of the sun and solar system that directly affect life and society: understanding coronal mass ejections: studying space at the edge of the solar system: understanding the solar wind The audio, illustrations, photos, and videos are credited beneath the media asset, except for promotional images, which generally link to another page that contains the media credit.
The Rights Holder for media is the person or group credited. Mary Crooks, National Geographic Society Jeannie Evers, Emdash Editing, Emdash Editing National Geographic Society
Do you get paid for giving the sun a story?
When you sell a story to The Sun – If you’re looking to raise awareness, The Sun is one of the best papers to appear in. The famous red-top has over 2.2 million readers daily and is great for getting behind worthy campaigns – like Help the Heroes. It can be daunting speaking directly to a newspaper such as The Sun; the reporters are very busy there and may not have the time to listen to your story properly even if you do manage to get through to someone on the correct desk. The Sun is one of our biggest clients and we sell dozens of stories to them a week. We have direct lines to the editors of each department and are here to navigate the corridors of ‘fleet street’ for you. The Sun often pay the highest fees for stories, but this varies hugely from department to department.
How does the sun work for dummies
The Sun is a yellow dwarf star at the center of our solar system. Earth and all other objects in our solar system orbit around the Sun due to gravity – the Sun contains over 98% of all mass in the solar system and so exerts a strong gravitational pull. This composite of six images shows the International Space Station (ISS) transit in front of the Sun from its position in low Earth orbit, which took less than one minute. Even though the Sun is 93 million miles away, astronauts aboard the ISS must protect themselves from solar radiation when they are in the Earth’s upper atmosphere. NASA, 2020