There are billions of stars in our universe. One of them is the most important star to life on Earth. That’s the sun. When we examine all that the sun does for life on earth, how perfectly placed we are in relation to the sun in the solar system and the amount of power that emanates from the sun, it isn’t hard to see why that for thousands of years cultures the world over worshiped the sun as a god.
Although many ancients saw it as a god, we know it to be a nuclear powered ball of gas. Like all stars, the sun is a mass of super heated plasma. It is also interesting to note that with all of its power and might in relation to some other stars in the universe scientists consider the sun to be a yellow dwarf. Dwarfs are very small stars that don’t burn as intensely or brightly as others stars. Compared to many other stars, a dwarf star is rather unimpressive. But within the boundaries of the solar system our yellow dwarf, the sun, is king!
Let’s look at some facts about the sun: although our sun is very small in comparison to other stars, it is big enough to fit 1 million Earths within its boundaries. It’s surface temperature is about 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Long ago people once thought that the sun worked like a fire. They thought that perhaps it had a core of charcoal or coal. Today we understand that it works by using its energy differently from a regular fire. A fire, as we all know, has to be constantly fueled by something or someone else separate from it. A fire cannot power itself, but stars can. The sun powers itself through the use of nuclear fusion. Fusion occurs when hydrogen atoms move at an extremely high rate of speed, so fast that when they bump into each other, instead of bouncing off of each other they fuse together and create helium atoms. This the the process that fuels a star and allows stars to power themselves and burn for such a long time.
By the time sunlight reaches our planet it has already been in existence for hundreds of thousands of years. Scientists believe that the sun was born from the aftermath of an exploding supernova and that the earth and the other planets in the solar system may have been formed from this same material but the sun took up at least 90% of this material which explains its size and power.
Let’s look at something really fascinating about the sun – its magnetic field! Most of us know about the simple magnetic field on each planet. There is a north pole and a south pole. Simple enough, right? The sun’s magnetic field is very complex. It’s more like a tangled web of points all over the star instead of the straight forward “one on the top and one on the bottom” magnetic field. This is because a star doesn’t move or rotate like a solid body does. The same with our sun. The plasma burning within the sun doesn’t rotate evenly because it isn’t solid. Scientists call this differential rotation. Thus the many magnetic fields on the sun.
Coronal loops rise and spiral into the sun’s atmosphere and they are supported by the many magnetic structures below the sun’s surface. The sun has millions of plasma jets and coronal loops, some so huge that you can fit a planet as big as Jupiter under them. The sun also produces beautiful structures like plasma helices (plural of helix), twisted coronal hoops of fire!
The blemishes on its surface, or sun spots are actually plasma craters and they can spin like hurricane storms. The magnetic fields of these spots become even more twisted when they spin and this helps to build up the sun’s magnetic energy. They also cause solar flares. Another interesting fact about the sun are “sun quakes”; massive solar tsunamis which also help to feed the sun’s magnetic energy cycle.
With all of this massive activity some of this energy is bound to affect the earth and sometimes it does! The coronal mass ejections from the sun – super heated radio active plasma or super charged particles, are ejected into space and some of this energy hits the earth’s atmosphere. These solar flares ejected during sun storms can disrupt power, communications and infrastructure on the earth.
Regardless of these activities though, the sun is far more beneficial to us than unforgiving and dangerous. It’s massive energy and power brings the perfect amount of heat, light and energy to earth in order to sustain all life on our planet. Even though in comparison to other stars it is a dwarf, for us and our neck of the woods on the outskirts of the Milky Way galaxy it is a life sustaining body and the king of the solar system.
