The Sun

Introduction     By far, the Sun is the most massive body in our solar system. The mass of all the planets combined is only about 0.2% of the Sun's mass. The Sun is also the only object whose internal temperature is high enough to produce nuclear reactions. If Jupiter had been 100 times more massive, or 1/10 of the mass of the Sun, ours would have been a binary star system. While gas giant planets such as Jupiter do …

…cycles of the Sun give rise to important oscillations in the Earth's climate. Between 1645 and 1715 no sunspots were detected at all. This sudden solar inactivity coincided with a decrease in temperature on our planet, called the 'little ice age'. It is possible that the main ice ages are also correlated with the Sun's activity, although this conjecture has not been sufficiently corroborated, and the Sun may be just a co-factor in this equation. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ **Bibliography**