My Science School

The Sun's age

Scientists say our Sun is four-and-a-half billion years old but how did they estimate its age?

To predict the age of the Sun, scientists looked at the age of the whole solar system because it all came together around the same time.

To find out the solar system's age, scientists looked for the oldest things they could find. And, Moon rocks, meteorites and Earth rocks worked perfectly well for this. Scientists extensively studied these objects, and after much research came to the conclusion that each of the objects were approximately four and- A-half billion years old, and hence, the Sun is likely to be of the same age.

How long will it shine?

Now that we know how old the Sun is, how much longer will it shine upon us?

Scientists believe that stars such as our Sun usually burn for about nine or 10 billion years. This means our Sun is halfway through its life and will last for another five billion years at least.

Once five billion years are up, the Sun will become a red giant. The Sun will become bigger and cooler at the same time and it will be a lot different than the Sun we know today. As a red giant our Sun will become 2,000 times brighter than it is now. Wonder what would happen to our solar system at that time - will there be new life?

 

Picture Credit : Google

Indeed, this was a scientific problem for hundreds of years: if Sun consisted of oxygen, it would run out of fuel in a few hundred years. So what’s the deal?

But wait, nowadays we know more. What other objects glow like the Sun, even without oxygen?

This example of a lamp bulb shows that not all objects that shed light need oxygen to do so. Of course, for light bulb that gas is typically some inert gas (see e.g. Which gas is typically used in light bulb?).

In fact, the light bulb doesn’t use up the gas. Instead, it uses an electric wire, i.e. a resistor, heated up by the electricity flowing through it. The wire heats up, in turn heating up the gas.

The Sun is a bit similar to a light bulb. From early spectroscopic studies in the 1800s, we know that it consists of gas, mostly hydrogen and helium. The latter was actually first discovered on Sun giving the element its name from Helios, Greek name for Sun.

Nowadays we also know that this gas is heated up not by directly burning its chemical constituents, but by a special phenomenon that is the reverse of what’s happening in nuclear power plants: nuclear fusion.

While in nuclear power plants uranium splits up and by doing so releases energy (nuclear fission), in nuclear fusion the hydrogen atoms combine to form helium or even more massive particles. In case of light particles like hydrogen this again releases large amounts of energy.

The energy released speeds up the particles in the Sun’s core and in turn these super-heated particles slowly bounce around and raise to Sun’s surface. There, the temperature of the hydrogen-helium gas is 5500 degrees Celsius or near 10 000 degrees Fahrenheit.

A gas this hot will glow literally like the Sun, finally releasing the heated energy to the universe and, consequentially, to us.

Sun continually loses a tiny portion of its mass to keep shining, combining hydrogen to helium in its fusion forge, its core. From observing other stars like it, we know it has enough nuclear fuel to shine for another few billions of years.

 

Credit : Quora

Picture Credit : Google