Stars like our Sun burn for about nine or 10 billion years. So our Sun is about halfway through its life. But don’t worry. It still has about 5,000,000,000—five billion—years to go. When those five billion years are up, the Sun will become a red giant. That means the Sun will get bigger and cooler at the same time.
But neither result squared up with what we knew the age of the solar system to be—4.5 billion years. If the sun were contracting or burning, it would have run out of fuel long before we came around. Clearly, something else was going on.
Articles from Britannica Encyclopedias for elementary and high school students. Sun - Evolution, Structure, Radiation: 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.
The sun is 4.5-billion years old and is likely only half-way through its life. It will likely shine for another four to five billion years.
The sun will shine for another four to five billion years. To determine this, you only need to find out how much hydrogen fuel the sun has and calculate the rate of nuclear fusion in the sun’s core.
In a few billion years, the sun will become a red giant so large that it will engulf our planet. But the Earth will become uninhabitable much sooner than that. After about a billion years the sun will become hot enough to boil our oceans. The sun is currently classified as a "main sequence" star.
The sun won''t die for 5 billion years, so why do humans have only …
Our solar system is just over 4.5 billion years old, so the sun is slightly more than halfway through its stable lifetime. After 8 billion years of happily burning hydrogen into helium are...
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How Does The Sun Burn Without Oxygen?
When that time comes our sun will die, slowly cool, and the solar system will go cold forever, but the process of a star dying is long and drawn out and won''t even begin for another 5 billion years. So you see, there is really no mystery as to how the sun can burn without oxygen because it doesn''t really "burn" at all.
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NASA''s Cosmicopia -
The Sun has been burning for about 5 billion (5,000,000,000) years. Our Galaxy is more than 10 billion years old, and new stars are forming all the time, so our Sun is neither young nor old, and is almost right in the middle of stellar ages.
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Experts Doubt the Sun Is Actually Burning Coal
"If the sun were composed of coal, it would last at the present rate only 5,000 years. The sun, in all probability, is not a burning, but an incandescent, body. Its light is rather that of a ...
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Why hasn''t the sun burned out yet?
Luckily for us, the sun didn''t burn out before we showed up a few hundred thousand years ago. But how could it have that much fuel? Why hasn''t it been snuffed out like a candle or a campfire...
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Olympic Torch Lighting 2021: How Long Has the Olympic Flame Been Burning?
A burning flame has been part of the modern Olympics since 1928, but the tradition goes all the way back to the ancient Games in Greece. So the Olympic flame lighting ceremony, which was first incorporated along with the torch relay for the 1936 Berlin Games, is held at the ancient Olympic site of Olympia in Greece. At the ceremony, a parabolic mirror and …
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Our Sun: Facts
The Sun would have been surrounded by a disk of gas and dust early in its history when the solar system was first forming 4.6 billion years ago. Some of that dust is still around today, in several dust rings that circle the Sun. They trace …
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How does the sun keep burning?
After 5 billion years, the sun will run out of its fuel. Theoretically, to save the sun, the sun needs to be "stirred" with a giant ladle or stirrer so that unburned hydrogen from its outer layer - the convective zone - would need to …
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Scientists Figured Out When And How Our Sun Will …
Several previous studies have found that, in order for a bright planetary nebula to form, the initial star needs to have been up to twice as massive as the Sun. However, the 2018 study used computer modeling to …
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Is the sun burning out?
Is the Sun burning out? The sun has been burning for around 4.6 billion years and is expected to live another 5 billion years. However, it is possible that the sun will die sooner. Scientists are constantly studying the sun to learn …
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Stanford SOLAR Center -
The Sun was born from a contracting gas cloud. The formation of the Sun took no more than 10 million years. When the temperature was high enough in the core (15 million degrees), …
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Olympic Torch Lighting 2021: How Long Has the Olympic Flame Been Burning?
Olympic Torch Lighting 2021: How Long Has the Olympic Flame Been Burning? The Olympic flame''s year-plus-long journey came to an end at the Opening Ceremony this evening in Tokyo By Eric Mullin ...
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NASA''s Cosmicopia -
The Sun has been burning for about 5 billion (5,000,000,000) years. Our Galaxy is more than 10 billion years old, and new stars are forming all the time, so our Sun is neither young nor old, and is almost right in the middle …
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UCSB Science Line
The sun has been burning very steadily for 5 billion years or so, and won''t change very much for another 5 billion years more. The processes by which stars change is quite well understood by astronomers, and our sun will not explode even after 5 billion more years (only very heavy stars explode) - it will slowly get bigger, and then slowly get ...
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Stanford SOLAR Center -
The Sun was born from a contracting gas cloud. The formation of the Sun took no more than 10 million years. When the temperature was high enough in the core (15 million degrees), hydrogen started to burn into helium (nuclear fusion). This is the most stable state of the Sun ("main sequence"), and we live during this period of the Sun.
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Sun
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 …
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When will the sun explode?
Of course, this will almost certainly be bad news for whatever life remains on our planet by that point — assuming any has survived the 10% increase in the sun''s brightness that is expected to ...
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Will The Sun Ever Burn Out?
When Will The Sun Burn Out? The sun will continue to shine for another four to five billion years. Image credit: NASA. There is a fairly simple process to determine when the sun will enter the final stages of its life. All you have to do is find out how much hydrogen fuel the sun has, and then determine the rate of nuclear fusion in ...
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UCSB Science Line
The sun has been burning very steadily for 5 billion years or so, and won''t change very much for another 5 billion years more. The processes by which stars change is quite well understood by …
Learn More
Will The Sun Ever Burn Out?
When Will The Sun Burn Out? The sun will continue to shine for another four to five billion years. Image credit: NASA. There is a fairly simple process to determine when the sun will enter the final stages of its life. All you …
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Will the Sun Die? | Ask An Earth and Space Scientist
The sun is a star that formed about 4.6 billion years ago. Scientists believe that a giant spinning cloud of gas and dust began to collapse due to its gravity. Much of the material that collapsed came together to form the sun. Gravity continues to create pressure, pulling the material that makes up the sun toward its center. This pressure leads to very high temperatures. The core …
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