Interesting facts about the sun you probably didn’t know

Did you know…?

We see it (nearly) every day, countless songs have been written about it, life as we know it would cease to exist without it and Solinear has built a business around it!

But how much do you know about it? It’s ok, we’re not testing you on Solinear’s solar shading and the world won’t end without it and, as far as we know, no one has written songs about solar shading(?). Instead, we have listed some interesting facts about the Sun that you may find them useful if conversation dries up over dinner or you’ve accidentally applied to be on Mastermind…

1. The Sun is 870,000 miles (1.4 million km) across;
2. The diameter of the Sun (2,715,395 miles/4.730,005 kilometres) is 109 times the size of Earth therefore 1.3 million Earths could fit inside the Sun. Alternatively flattening out 11,990 Earths would cover the surface of the Sun;
3. Its mass is approx. 330,000 times that of Earth;
4. The Sun is a near perfect sphere of searing plasma – the surface heats up to a temperature of about 6,000 degrees Kelvin whereas the centre reaches a scorching 14 million degrees Kelvin;
5. At roughly 4.6 billion years old, the Sun is believed to be halfway through its lifecycle;
6. Every billion years the Sun becomes 10% more luminous so it’s gradually heating up;
7. In about 5 billion years, the Sun will enter its red giant phase, where it will swell up to consume inner planets – probably including Earth;
8. Sources differ with regards to the percentage of gases that make up the Sun, but it roughly consists of between 75-85% hydrogen and 15-25% helium;
9. Helium is from the ancient Greek word helios, meaning Sun;
10. The Sun accounts for 99.8% of the mass of the Solar System;
11. When Earth is at its closest approach to the Sun (approx. 91 million miles (146 million km), in January, it’s called perihelion;
12. When Earth is at its furthest away from the Sun it is called aphelion;
13. The “Sun’s day” or Sunday as we know it now stems from Old English word Sunnandæg;
14. It takes about 8 minutes for the sunlight to be seen on the earth after it has left the Sun;
15. Approximately every 11 years, the sun reverses its overall magnetic polarity: its north magnetic pole becomes a south pole, and vice versa;
16. 100,000,000,000 tons of dynamite would have to be detonated every second to match the energy produced by the sun each second;
17. A bag of sugar weighing 1kg on Earth would weigh 28kg on the sun because the sun’s gravity is 28 times that of Earth;

While evidence suggests that fluctuations in solar activity can influence climate on Earth, most climate scientists and astrophysicists agree that the sun isn’t at blame for the present and historically sudden increase in global temperatures on Earth, which have mostly been caused by human activity.