Science has proven that without the sun, there could be no life on earth, something that even the ancient peoples recognized. Indeed, they went as far as considering it to be a god. Anaxagoras, of course, was right in thinking that the sun was a ball of fire, although he thought of it as a metal ball. He can be forgiven for thinking this, after all, it would take another 2,000 years before the telescope was invented. Besides, it was he who took the sun out of the realm of the supernatural.
So what is the sun really made of? The sun is almost 75% hydrogen, 24% helium, and the rest, called metals by astronomers, are oxygen, carbon, neon, and iron. These came together with the collapse of a gigantic cold molecular gas and dust cloud some 4.6 billion years ago. Such collapse may have been caused by the gravity of a passing star or the explosion of a huge star. This caused the gas and dust in the cloud to pull together to form denser bodies, among them was the solar system.
Most of the particles gathered in the center of the system, which was to become the sun, while rest were scattered around it forming the planets and asteroids. It took a few million years before the sun stabilized into its current form, beginning its life as a collapsing protostar and as an active star shooting intense solar wind.
The sun’s hydrogen is converted into helium at a rate of 600 million tons per second. It is this that generates the sun’s energy. This has been going on for the last 4.6 billion years, and in another 7 billion, the sun shall have used up its hydrogen.
As helium builds up, the rate of hydrogen conversion increases, making the sun gradually become hotter. In about a billion years, it will be 10% hotter. Add another 2.5 billion and it will be 40% hotter. The earth’s oceans will boil, water vapor will be lost, and life will be unsustainable.
Six billion years from now, the sun will run out of hydrogen. The helium will collapse under its own weight and cause the core to heat up and get denser. This, in turn, will cause the sun to become a red giant, gobbling up nearby planets, probably as far as the earth.
It will continue to burn its helium for another 100 million years. When this, too, is used up, it will begin to blast off its atmosphere until all that remains is its central core of carbon, which is about the size of the earth. This is its white dwarf stage. It will continue to shine for a trillion years with thermal radiation, but it will slowly cool down until it reaches a few degrees above absolute zero, which is the temperature of the rest of the universe. That will be the death of the sun.
Notwithstanding the deification of the sun by ancient peoples, there were trailblazers who broke new ground looking for scientific explanations for the sun. Although ancient astronomers were already keenly observing the movements of the sun, as is evidenced by the many monuments erected with a view to marking the solstices, such as the Nabta Playa in Egypt, Mnajdra in Malta, Stonehenge in England, and El Castillo at Chichen Itza in Mexico among others, they appeared to be focused more on predicting the seasons, perhaps for religious or agricultural purposes.