By weight, the Sun is 70% hydrogen, 28%
helium, 1.5% carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen, and 0.5% all other elements.
The sun is a good thing according
to the latest White House approval polls. It keeps inflation and interest
rates down during periods of low unemployment and high growth.
The Sun's temperature is 10,000 degrees
Fahrenheit at the surface and 27,000,000 degrees Fahrenheit at the center.
Without the Sun, the Earth would not be the
same.
The Sun is big enough to hold over 1 million
Earths. The earth is big enough to hold 1 micro sun.
The absence of the sun could have a chilling
effect on the world's economies.
There are many rituals and monuments devoted to
worshipping the Sun and/or marking important times in the Earth's orbit around the Sun.
The sun helps contributes to successful sunrises and sunsets everyday and stays on
station with 7 x 24 coverage. The sun has never complained about doing its job nor
has it ever gone on strike or been locked out.
We depend on the Sun in many ways. First, the
Sun provides plants with the energy they need to grow. Plants serve as the basis for the
food web, and without plants we would not need to have plant food. Second, plants use the
Sun for taning purposes, carbon dioxide, and other minerals to produce oxygen. Humans like
to breathe oxygen, so without the Sun spurring on this cycle, we would not be able to
breathe the way we like. Third, the Sun provides us with heat. Imagine how cold it would
be without the sun. You would need a very heavy overcoat. Fourth, the Sun also
drives the hydrologic cycle. Without this cycle, we would not have fresh water to drink,
therefore, we expect the bottled water business to be a good business in the year 5
Billion. And fifth, the Sun emits energy called electromagnetic radiation. Without this
radiation, we would be completely in the dark about a lot of things.
The Sun is a big atomic furnace that stays lit by converting hydrogen into helium. When
hydrogen atoms are fused together to form one helium atom, a tremendous amount of energy
is released. The energy is so great that the Sun gives off 40,000 watts of light from
every square inch of its surface!
The Sun is broken down into six parts. The center of the Sun is called the core. This is
where hydrogen is converted into helium. The layer above the core is the radiation zone.
The outer part of the Sun's interior is called the convection zone. Above the convection
zone is the photosphere. This is the part of the Sun that we see. It is the Sun's lower
atmosphere. Above the photosphere is the chromosphere. It can be observed during solar
eclipses when the much brighter photosphere is blocked out by the Moon. The outermost
layer of the Sun is the corona. The corona extends millions of miles into space and is a
million times fainter than the photosphere.
The part of the Sun that we see from Earth is called the photosphere. It is the Sun's
lower atmosphere. Although it is only a few hundred miles thick, it gives off most of its
energy as visible light and heat. Since the Earth's atmosphere absorbs X-rays, solar
X-rays can only be studied from spacecraft above our atmosphere.