• Question: how was the sun formed

    Asked by jojo 2 to Simonne, Senga, Pete, James, Jake on 9 Nov 2017.
    • Photo: Senga Robertson

      Senga Robertson answered on 9 Nov 2017:

      Hi jojo2

      great question. I didn’t know the full answer so I had to look on the internet to get more information.

      A lot of scientists think that the sun was formed about 4.6 billion years ago and that the sun (and everything in our solar system) formed from a massive, rotating cloud of gas and dust which they call “the solar nebula”. They think the solar nebula collapsed because of its gravity, so it was spinning so fast it ended up squishing in on itself into a sort of disk shape. Most of the gas and dust got pulled in to the middle of the disk and the sun war formed. The gas and dust that didn’t get sucked in to form the sun ended up forming the rest of the solar system.

      I also found out that scientists think that the sun still has enough energy to last for another 5 billion years……….that’s a longer time than my brain can even think about…if you think of how different our planet was even “only”millions of years ago (dinosaurs were walking the earth) it’s amazing to even try and have a guess at how different our planet will be 5 billion years from now. My mind is pretty blown thinking about that to be honest, I won’t lie.

      What do you think Earth will be like in 5 billion years?

      Senga 🙂

    • Photo: Jake Langham

      Jake Langham answered on 10 Nov 2017:

      That’s a good explanation. I’ll add that all stars are initially formed by gas and dust in space clumping together due to gravity. We can see this happening by looking at other parts of the galaxy with telescopes. You might have seen pictures of a famous nebula where stars are created before, called the Eagle nebula Amazingly, those “pillars” in the picture are about 4 light years long! So you have to be really far away like us to see this beautiful structure.

      ***

      You can see lots of other pictures of nebulae (collections of dust and gas in space that will eventually clump together into stars) here: https://www.space.com/12605-50-deep-space-nebula-photos.html

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