EXPLORE: The Sun

The sun is in the middle of its lifespan, and is currently in the main sequence phase. At this stage in its life the sun is fusing hydrogen into helium. As the Sun becomes older, it grows slightly larger, brighter and hotter. At about 1.1 billion years from now the Sun will be 10% bigger than it is now. As a result, the extra solar energy will dry up Earth's atmosphere and many kinds of life. In about 3.5 billion years, the sun will be 40% bigger and will probably mean that all life on Earth will cease to exist. The next stage will be for the sun to become a Red Giant.

Sources: The text has been adapted for a 9th grade level. This was originally the hypertext version of a public lecture given on 1997 June 12 at the Perkins Observatory in Delaware, Ohio, as part of the 1997 New Vistas inAstronomy lecture series. It has been updated a number of times since then.The Once and Future Sun by Richard W. Pogge is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. Based on a work at The Ohio State University Department of Astronomy (www.astronomy.ohio-state.edu)