• Question: Is it true that the sun gets 10% bigger every single century

    Asked by anon-193409 to Jamal, iainstaniland, Heidi, Emma, Carl on 10 Nov 2018.
    • Photo: Carl Heron

      Carl Heron answered on 10 Nov 2018:

      hmmm……I don’t think so but I’m not an astronomer. When the sun burns out (in about 5 billion years), I think the sun will get bigger as it becomes a red giant. Can anyone else help SalvationG142 with this?
      Carl

    • Photo: Heidi Gardner

      Heidi Gardner answered on 10 Nov 2018:

      I’m not sure about this but I did a bit of research and the research doesn’t seem to suggest that it’s getting that much bigger within the space of a century.
      It’s true that the sun is getting bigger – this is happening because it ‘burns’ hydrogen into helium deep in the core (the middle of it!), this means that the core is slowly collapsing and heating up which means that the outer layers of the sun is getting bigger. It is a super gradual process, and in the last 4 billion years research has estimated that the sun has grown by about 20% at most.

    • Photo: Emma Crawford

      Emma Crawford answered on 11 Nov 2018:

      I looked into this, and apparently the weight of the sun isn’t constant as it loses material by solar wind. However stars, such as the sun, do generally get bigger as they get older. Read more here:
      https://www.space.com/17001-how-big-is-the-sun-size-of-the-sun.html

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