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The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System.It is a massive, nearly perfect sphere of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core, radiating the energy from its surface mainly as visible light and infrared radiation with 10% at ultraviolet energies.
In the long term, the greatest changes in the Solar System will come from changes in the Sun itself as it ages. As the Sun burns through its hydrogen fuel supply, it gets hotter and burns the remaining fuel even faster. As a result, the Sun is growing brighter at a rate of ten percent every 1.1 billion years. [117]
Thus, the Sun occupies 0.00001% (1 part in 10 7) of the volume of a sphere with a radius the size of Earth's orbit, whereas Earth's volume is roughly 1 millionth (10 −6) that of the Sun. Jupiter, the largest planet, is 5.2 AU from the Sun and has a radius of 71,000 km (0.00047 AU; 44,000 mi), whereas the most distant planet, Neptune, is 30 AU ...
The timeline of discovery of Solar System planets and their natural satellites charts the progress of the discovery of new bodies over history. Each object is listed in chronological order of its discovery (multiple dates occur when the moments of imaging, observation, and publication differ), identified through its various designations (including temporary and permanent schemes), and the ...
Aristarchus of Samos (/ ˌ æ r ə ˈ s t ɑːr k ə s /; Ancient Greek: Ἀρίσταρχος ὁ Σάμιος, Aristarkhos ho Samios; c. 310 – c. 230 BC) was an ancient Greek astronomer and mathematician who presented the first known heliocentric model that placed the Sun at the center of the universe, with the Earth revolving around the Sun once a year and rotating about its axis once a day.
Aristarchus of Samos had speculated about heliocentrism in Ancient Greece; Martianus Capella taught in the early Middle Ages that both Mercury and Venus orbit the Sun, while the Moon, the Sun and the other planets orbit the Earth; [10] in Al-Andalus, Arzachel proposed that Mercury orbits the Sun, and heliocentric astronomers worked in the ...
The Sun is always the center of attention in our solar system, but 2024 was unique for a number of events that unfolded throughout the year – some we knew were coming and others that surprised us.
The natural evolution of the Sun made it progressively more luminous during the Archean and Proterozoic eons; the Sun's luminosity increases 6% every billion years. [59]: 165 As a result, the Earth began to receive more heat from the Sun in the Proterozoic eon. However, the Earth did not get warmer.