TIL the sun loses over 4 million tons of mass every second as energy! Can you imagine that? It’s like losing the mass of over 2,000 adult elephants every single second! 😱
This massive loss of mass is due to the process of nuclear fusion at the sun’s core, where hydrogen atoms combine to form helium and release energy in the process. ⚛️💥 This energy is then radiated out into space, providing heat and light to sustain life on Earth. 🌍☀️
So, next time you’re basking in the sun or enjoying a beautiful sunset, remember that the sun is constantly changing and evolving, and its energy is what makes life possible on our planet. 🌅💫#SunScience #RenewableEnergy
… and yet enough mass to burn for an extra 4 billion years.
that’s just wasteful
And we can only harness a tiny percentage of all of its radiant glory….
I remember working this out for a high school exam question based on the intensity of light in lumens shining on a square metre of the Earth’s surface at the equator (discounting negligible atmospheric effects). That was a fun question. Took half a page to answer.
It’s one big treadmill in the center, burning calories
Sometimes I just stare at the Sun and I’m in awe.
Why haven’t we upgraded it to LED? Almost NO energy wasted as heat.
Imagine if we were a tier 1 or tier 0 civilization and can fully harvest that energy
A gigantic nuclear furnace? Where hydrogen is built into helium at a temperature of millions of degrees??
Weird…I just posted this info on another site because dude was mad nobody was talking about climate change possibly being caused by the Sun gaining mass and pulling Earth in closer.
I remember I met this alien in the woods and he was all like yo solar systems star is so big it loses 4 million tons of mass every second. His alien buddies were like oh fuck buuuuurn
Then they jammed a bunch of stuff up my butt it was a pretty neat night
That’s a huge bitch
Or 0.25 of OP’s mom.
Heyyyooo.
I had a gigantic book of random facts when I was a kid around 30 years ago.
I always remembered one page about the sun, saying it used something like 300,000 truck loads worth of fuel every second.
It used to give me anxiety that the sun was going to run out even though we’d been taught in school that it’s good for several billion more years yet.
If I could just do 4kg a month…
What incredible is how much 4 million tons a second sounds, yet compared to the total mass of the sun how small the percentage of its mass is being consumed as fuel.
In this economy?
That’s 840,000 African elephants per second.
The more-fun fact I prefer about the sun is that your body produces significantly more heat per unit volume than the core of the sun. The sun is just really really big.
Yeah but she a thicc bitch. We gonna be ok.
It would take the Sun approximately 47.3 million years to burn the mass equivalent to Earth
You know, I’ve heard about how truly massive this sun is before. But this is the first post that made me really comprehend it
Literally every single fact about anything in space blows the mind. Sizes, weights, distance, ages, chemical makeup, temperature, pressure, gravity, magnetic field, you name it
It would still take over 3 and a half million years for the Sun, through fusion and solar wind, to lose the mass equivalent of Earth.
Keep an eye out for astrophage…