The Giant Star That Keeps Us All Alive..
The Giant Star That
Keeps Us All Alive..
A celestial wonder, the sun is a huge
star formed from a massive gravitational collapse when space dust and gas from
a nebulla collided. It became an orb 100 times bigger and weighing over
3,00,000 times that of earth. Made up of 70 percent hydrogen and 28 percent
helium (plus other gasses), the sun is the centre of our solar system and the
largest celestial body anywhere near us.
"The surface of the sun is a
dense layer of plasma at a temperature of 5,800 degrees kelvin that is
continually moving due to the action of convective motions driven by heating
from below", says David Alexander, a professor physics and astronomy at
Rice University. "These convective motions show up us a distribution of
what are called granulation cells about 1,000 kilometres across and which
appear across the whole solar surface".
At its core, the sun's temperature
and pressure are so high and the hydrogen atoms are moving so fast that it
causes fusion, turning hydrogen atoms into helium. Electromagnetic radiation
travels out from the sun's core to its surface, escaping into space as
electromagnetic radiation, a blinding light, and incredible levels of solar
heat. Infact, the core of the son is actually hotter than the surface, but when heat escapes from the surface, the
temperature rises to over 1-2 million degrees.