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- In roughly 5 billion years, the Sun will cool and expand outward to many times its current diameter (becoming a red giant), before casting off its outer layers as a planetary nebula and leaving behind a stellar remnant known as a white dwarf. In the distant future, the gravity of passing stars will gradually reduce the Sun's retinue of planets.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formation_and_evolution_of_the_Solar_System
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At its equator, the Sun completes one rotation in 25 Earth days. At its poles, the Sun rotates once on its axis every 36 Earth days. The part of the Sun we see from Earth – the part we call the surface – is the photosphere. The Sun doesn’t actually have a solid surface because it’s a ball of plasma.
The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is a massive, nearly perfect sphere of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core, radiating the energy from its surface mainly as visible light and infrared radiation with 10% at ultraviolet energies.
About 4.6 billion years ago, this gigantic cloud was transformed into our Sun. The processes that followed gave rise to the solar system, complete with eight planets, 181 moons, and countless asteroids. Researcher Tim Gregory explains how it burst into being.
Jan 27, 2021 · It came from a giant molecular cloud — a collection of gas up to 600 light-years in diameter with the mass of 10 million Suns — which had been circling the Milky Way for who knows how many...
- Overview
- Evolution of the Sun
- Helioseismology
The Sun has been shining for 4.6 billion years. Considerable hydrogen has been converted to helium in the core, where the burning is most rapid. The helium remains there, where it absorbs radiation more readily than hydrogen. This raises the central temperature and increases the brightness. Model calculations conclude that the Sun becomes 10 percent brighter every billion years; hence it must now be at least 40 percent brighter than at the time of planet formation. This would produce an increase in Earth’s temperature, but no such effect appears in the fossil record. There were probably compensating thermostatic effects in the atmosphere of Earth, such as the greenhouse effect and cloudiness. The young Sun may also have been more massive, and thus more luminous, and would have lost its early mass through the solar wind. The increase in solar brightness can be expected to continue as the hydrogen in the core is depleted and the region of nuclear burning moves outward. At least as important for the future of Earth is the fact that tidal friction will slow down Earth’s rotation until, in four billion years, its rotation will match that of the Moon, turning once in 30 of our present days.
The evolution of the Sun should continue on the same path as that taken by most stars. As the core hydrogen is used up, the nuclear burning will take place in a growing shell surrounding the exhausted core. The star will continue to grow brighter, and when the burning approaches the surface, the Sun will enter the red giant phase, producing an enormous shell that may extend as far as Venus or even Earth. Fortunately, unlike more massive stars that have already reached this state, the Sun will require billions of years to reach this state.
The Sun has been shining for 4.6 billion years. Considerable hydrogen has been converted to helium in the core, where the burning is most rapid. The helium remains there, where it absorbs radiation more readily than hydrogen. This raises the central temperature and increases the brightness. Model calculations conclude that the Sun becomes 10 percent brighter every billion years; hence it must now be at least 40 percent brighter than at the time of planet formation. This would produce an increase in Earth’s temperature, but no such effect appears in the fossil record. There were probably compensating thermostatic effects in the atmosphere of Earth, such as the greenhouse effect and cloudiness. The young Sun may also have been more massive, and thus more luminous, and would have lost its early mass through the solar wind. The increase in solar brightness can be expected to continue as the hydrogen in the core is depleted and the region of nuclear burning moves outward. At least as important for the future of Earth is the fact that tidal friction will slow down Earth’s rotation until, in four billion years, its rotation will match that of the Moon, turning once in 30 of our present days.
The evolution of the Sun should continue on the same path as that taken by most stars. As the core hydrogen is used up, the nuclear burning will take place in a growing shell surrounding the exhausted core. The star will continue to grow brighter, and when the burning approaches the surface, the Sun will enter the red giant phase, producing an enormous shell that may extend as far as Venus or even Earth. Fortunately, unlike more massive stars that have already reached this state, the Sun will require billions of years to reach this state.
The structure of a star is uniquely determined by its mass and chemical composition. Unique models are constructed by varying the assumed composition with the known mass until the observed radius, luminosity, and surface temperature are matched. The process also requires assumptions about the convective zone. Such models can now be tested by the new science known as helioseismology.
Helioseismology is analogous to geoseismology: frequencies and wavelengths of various waves at the Sun’s surface are measured to map the internal structure. On Earth the waves are observed only after earthquakes, while on the Sun they are continuously excited, probably by the currents in the convective zone. While a wide range of frequencies are observed, the intensity of the oscillation patterns, or modes, peaks strongly at a mode having a period of five minutes. The surface amplitudes range from a few centimetres per second to several metres per second. The modes where the entire Sun expands and contracts or where sound waves travel deeply through the Sun, only touching the surface in a few nodes (i.e., points of no vibration), make it possible to map the deep Sun. Modes with many nodes are, by contrast, limited to the outer regions. Every mode has a definite frequency determined by the structure of the Sun. From a compilation of thousands of mode frequencies, one can develop an independent solar model, which reproduces the observed oscillations quite well. The frequencies of the modes vary slightly with the sunspot cycle.
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All About Astronomy
6 days ago · The solar system consists of Earth and seven other planets all orbiting around the Sun. The Sun, moon, and planets all move in predictable patterns called orbits. Many of these orbits are observable from Earth. The entire solar system orbits around the Milky Way galaxy.
Dec 7, 2021 · Here we are, 4.5 billion years into the lifetime of our sun, with an array of planets and smaller objects orbiting around it. How did all the planets form, and why did they end up in the...
