How fast is the sun burning?

Question

I heard the sun burns an inch in diameter every minute but that doesn't make much sense to me.

Answer 1

The Sun is constant in it's form and existence. All matters that has physical existence in the Universe depends on something, in order for it to exist. What fuels the Sun is not from within it's body, but from the planets that are surrounding it. The Sun is in perpetual harmonious relation with all the planets.

Answer 2

There is some discrepency between posts 3 and 4. You need to look this up on wikipedia, but from memory, the sun emits over 4 million tonnes equivalent in radiation per SECOND.

This would be more in keeping with North Stars 600 million tonnes of H into He. The 4 million tonnes is what is lost in the fusion process, and represents the energy output.

Presumably someone has worked out that the sun consequently shrinks by 1 inch every minute. I would doubt that very much. I would think that as it loses mass, its gravity decreases, such that there is less and less force holding it together - in other words I would think it expands and becomes less dense as it loses mass.

But 4 million tonnes a second, though it sounds a lot, is peanuts compared with the mass of the sun, which is a number of tonnes with 27 zeroes on the end.

It won't run down for billions of years.

Go look up "sun" in www.wikipedia.com.

Answer 3

The Sun converts 654 million tons of hydrogen into 650 million tons of helium each second. The missing 4 million tons of mass is converted into high energy gamma rays through Einstein's equation E=mc2. Four hydrogen atoms are about .7 percent more massive than the helium nucleus they come together to form. Expressed as electrical power, the Sun is a vast, natural fusion nuclear reactor that is producing 380 billion trillion watts of power. Because of a tiny amount of mass being converted to energy, the Sun has been able to maintain it's output for nearly 5 billion years. It will continue to do so for another 5 billion years before all of the hydrogen in the core is exhausted and the Sun becomes a red giant.

Answer 4

Five million tons of matter are converted into energy each and every second in the sun. It is estimated that the sun can maintain this loss of mass for another five billion years, by then the mass of the sun may have been reduced to a point where outward force of radiation may overcome the force of gravity, if so, the sun will begin to expand into a red giant, this will be the beginning of the end for the sun.

Answer 5

No, it's not 1 inch every minute, more like 1 inch every 900 years.

The surface area of the sun is 6.088x10^18 m^2. If its mass is decreasing by 4x10^6 tons per second, and the sun's average density is 1.409, that's 2.839x10^6 cubic meters per second. Hence the diameter of the sun is decreasing by 9.326x10^-13 meters per second. At this rate, it takes 2.724x10^10 seconds to lose 2.54cm (one inch).

That's over 863 years.

If the diameter were shrinking by an inch every minute, it would be losing 1.289x10^15 m^3 of volume every second. With an average density of 1.409, this translates to 1.816x10^15 metric tons per second, which is much much larger than the quoted figure of 4x10^6 metric tons per second.

Answer 6

The diameter of the sun varies somewhat, but not because it's burning fuel. Our sun is in its 'main sequence' stage, meaning that it's very stable. The sun 'burns' about 4,600 metric tons of hydrogen per SECOND. As long as that process continues the sun will remain stable for billions of years.

Answer 7

In the core of the sun, where the temperature is 75 million degrees F(15 million C), the pressure is extreme, and the process of nuclear fusion turns hydrogen to helium at a rate of 600 million tons per second!!

Answer 8

First- it's not an inch a minute. It doesn't actually get smaller- it's not "burning" in the sense that you burn wood. It's undergoing nuclear fusion. It will run out of hydrogen in 5 billion years, become a red giant for another 2 billion, then die.

Answer 9

The sun is in it's mid life and has been active for 5 billion years. It will burn it self out in another 5 billion years according to scientists.

Answer 10

NOT FAST ENOUGH.