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The total number of particles carried away from the Sun by the solar wind is about 1.3 × 10 36 per second. [32] Thus, the total mass loss each year is about (2–3) × 10 −14 solar masses, [33] or about 1.3–1.9 million tonnes per second. This is equivalent to losing a mass equal to the Earth every 150 million years. [34]
At this rate, the Sun has so far converted around 100 times the mass of Earth into energy, about 0.03% of the total mass of the Sun. The Sun will spend a total of approximately 10 to 11 billion years as a main-sequence star before the red giant phase of the Sun. [ 135 ] At the 8 billion year mark, the Sun will be at its hottest point according ...
A solar flare is a sudden flash of brightness observed over the Sun's surface or the solar limb, which is interpreted as an energy release of up to 6 × 10 25 joules (about a sixth of the total Sun's energy output each second or 160 billion megatons of TNT equivalent, over 25,000 times more energy than released from the impact of Comet ...
As one moves far enough away from the Sun, the pressure of the solar wind drops to where it can no longer maintain supersonic flow against the pressure of the interstellar medium, at which point the solar wind slows to below its speed of sound, causing a shock wave. Further from the Sun, the termination shock is followed by heliopause, where ...
The core contains 34% of the Sun's mass, but only 3% of the Sun's volume, and it generates 99% of the fusion power of the Sun. There are two distinct reactions in which four hydrogen nuclei may eventually result in one helium nucleus: the proton–proton chain reaction – which is responsible for most of the Sun's released energy – and the ...
Diagram showing the Sun's components. The core is where nuclear fusion takes place, creating solar neutrinos. A solar neutrino is a neutrino originating from nuclear fusion in the Sun's core, and is the most common type of neutrino passing through any source observed on Earth at any particular moment.
In this framework, the early Sun underwent an extended period of higher solar wind output. Based on exoplanetary data, this caused a mass loss from the Sun of 5−6 percent over its lifetime, [27] resulting in a more consistent level of solar luminosity (as the early Sun had more mass, resulting in more energy output than was predicted).
The angular diameter of the Earth as seen from the Sun is approximately 1/11,700 radians (about 18 arcseconds), meaning the solid angle of the Earth as seen from the Sun is approximately 1/175,000,000 of a steradian. Thus the Sun emits about 2.2 billion times the amount of radiation that is caught by Earth, in other words about 3.846×10 26 watts.