Is it true that our Sun is losing Millions of tons of mater into the space daily?

Question

If this is true, can we conclude that the Sun is getting smaller every day?

Answer 1

It is true that the Sun ejects in the billions of tons of matter every day.

However, this simply means that Sun is getting LIGHTER not smaller. The Sun is actually expanding on a daily basis due to this loss of matter. The more matter it loses, the less gravity it has. Less gravity means that is has less of a pull on its outer coronal layer and thus it expands outward.

The Sun will one day expand into a Red Giant star whose diameter will stretch into Earth's orbit. It will become so massive that it will no longer be able to contain much of its matter. At that time it will eject almost half of what is left of itself and collapse in as a white dwarf.

Not to worry, though, the Sun has plenty of matter left, and has about 5 billion years left before it collapses.

Answer 2

We get the astonishingly huge amount of 400 trillion trillion watts a second of energy from the sun. To put this into a crazy context, every second the sun produces the same energy as about a trillion 1 megaton bombs! In one second, our sun produces enough energy for almost 500,000 years of our current needs. It doesn't get smaller but it does get lighter. However there is enough energy in the sun to sustain nuclear fusion for about another 5 billion years.

Answer 3

It's true. The exact amount is variable and debatable, but it is agreed among scientists that the amount is very large (like you way, millions of tons per day). There is a constant stream of protons leaving the sun from every square inch of its surface, and large coronal mass ejections happen frequently.

This means that the sun is getting smaller every day, but don't worry, there is still enough of it to last for billions of years.

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Answer 4

http://www.astronomycafe.net/qadir/q1491.html

Yep. It is about a couple million tons a second. Which is approx. 2 cubic kilometers worth at the density of water.

Which again is tiny compared to the size of the sun. A star just happens to be a pretty large object.

Nothing to worry about. Really.

Answer 5

Yes, it's true. E=Mc^2, and there's a lot of M being converted to E in the sun.

Answer 6

... [in the Sun] approximately 660 million tons of hydrogen undergo fusion into 650 million tons of helium every second, releasing the energy equivalent of 5.5 million tons of matter[every second].
The mass of the hydrogen is enough to last 10 billion years!

Answer 7

I think it's more like millions of tons per second...of a *gas* yet! It's another one of those amazing cosmic perspectives. At its current rate of consumption, it should be able to sustain nuclear fission for another 4 or 5 billion years. Man, that's a lot of gas!!!

Answer 8

If it is true, whatsa mater wit dat?