The sun warms and illuminates our planet. Life on it would be impossible without the energy of the luminary. This applies to humans and to all terrestrial flora and fauna. The sun supplies energy to all processes occurring on the Earth. The Earth receives from the Sun not only light and heat. The life of our planet is continuously affected by particle flows and various types of solar radiation.
The impact of the Sun has a strong effect on human he alth. Magnetic storms make many people feel worse.
This article will discuss general information about the Sun, namely the composition, temperature and mass of the Sun, the impact on the Earth, etc.
General information
The sun is the closest star to us. Studies of the Sun provide information about the conditions of reactions occurring in its depths and on the surface, allow us to understand the physical nature of stellar bodies, which we see as dimensionless sparkling points. The study of the processes occurring in the vicinity and on the surface of the Sun helps to understand the phenomena characteristic of the near-Earthspace.
The sun is the center of our planetary system, which also includes 8 planets, dozens of planetary satellites, thousands of asteroids, meteoroids, comets, interplanetary gas, dust. In the entire solar system, the mass of the Sun occupies 99.866% of the total mass. By astronomical standards, the distance from the Sun to the Earth is small: the light travels only 8 minutes.
The size of the Sun requires special attention. This is a huge star not only in size, but also in volume. Its diameter exceeds the diameter of the Earth by 109 times, and its volume, in turn, is 1.3 million times.
The approximate surface temperature of the Sun is 5800 degrees, so it shines almost white light, but due to the strong absorption and scattering of the short-wavelength part of the spectrum by the Earth's atmosphere, direct sunlight near the surface of our planet gets a yellow tint.
The temperature in the central zone of the Sun reaches 15 million degrees. Due to the rather high temperature, the matter of the Sun is in a gaseous state, and in the depths of a giant star, the atoms of chemical elements are divided into freely moving electrons and atomic nuclei.
The mass of the Sun is 1.98910^30 kg. This figure exceeds the mass of the Earth by 333 thousand times. The average density of a substance is 1.4 g/cm3. The average density of the Earth is almost 4 times higher. In addition, in astronomy there is the concept of the mass of the Sun - a unit of mass, which is used to express the mass of stars and other objects of astronomy (galaxies).
The gaseous mass of the sun is held together withby means of a general attraction to its center. The upper layers with their weight compress the deeper ones, and as the depth of the layer increases, the pressure increases.
The pressure in the depths of the Sun reaches hundreds of billions of atmospheres, so the substance in the solar depths has a high density.
This leads to the occurrence of thermonuclear reactions in the bowels of the Sun, as a result, hydrogen turns into helium and releases nuclear energy. Gradually, this energy "leaks" through the opaque solar matter, first into the outer layers, and then radiates into the world space.
The composition of the Sun includes elements such as hydrogen (73%), helium (25%) and other elements in much lower concentrations (nickel, nitrogen, sulfur, carbon, calcium, iron, oxygen, silicon, magnesium, neon, chrome).
