The sun ‘flips upside down':
10 surprising facts about our star
The fact that the sun's magnetic field reverses every eleven years,
isn't the only surprising thing about our closest star. Take a look at
some other incredible facts about the ball of fire that gives life to
Earth.
1. The sun makes up 99.8 percent of the mass of the entire solar
system. The sun’s core, although it only makes up around two percent of
the sun's volume, holds nearly half of its mass.
2. The sun is travelling at 220 kilometres per second. It takes the
225-250 million years to complete an orbit of the centre of the Milky
Way.
3. With a circumference of 2,715,395.6 miles, one million Earths
could fit inside the sun.
4. As the sun has no solid body - it is made up of 92.1 percent
hydrogen and 7.8 percent helium - different parts of the sun rotate at
different rates. At the equator, the sun spins once about every 25 days,
but at its poles the sun rotates once on its axis every 36 Earth days.
5. One day, the sun will be about the size of Earth. After its red
giant phase - when the sun would have expanded, consuming Mercury, Venus
and Earth - the sun will collapse, retaining its enormous mass, but
shrinking to the approximate volume of our planet to become a white
dwarf. It is currently categorised as a yellow dwarf and at 4.5 billion
years old, is currently middle aged.
6. The sun’s magnetic fields generate solar wind - streams of charged
particles, which travel through the solar system at 450 kilometres per
second. The winds cause radio interference, the northern lights and
tails on comets, as well as alter the trajectory of space crafts.
7. A complex internal mechanism about which little is known causes
the reverse in polarity.
8. The temperature at the sun's core is about 15 million °C while its
surface temperature is 5500 °C
9. Sunspots - visible dark patches that appear on the sun’s surface -
are temporary phenomena whereby intense magnetic activity form areas of
reduced surface temperature.
Solar flares shoot out from the sun’s surface during when magnetic
energy is released by the during magnetic storms. They are the most
violent eruptions in the solar system.
-The Independent |