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The Sun began as a giant cloud of molecular gas and dust. -
something happened that caused the cloud to collapse. -
From this collapse, pockets of dust and gas began to collect into denser regions. As the denser regions pulled in more and more matter, conservation of momentum caused it to begin rotating. -
While increasing pressure caused it to heat up. Most of the material ended up in a ball at the center while the rest of the matter flattened out into disk that circled around it. -
The Sun spent about 100,000 years as a collapsing protostar before temperature and pressures in the interior ignited fusion at its core. The sun started as a T Tauri Star. -
The ball at the center would eventually form the Sun, while the disk of material would form the planets. -
T Tauri star was a wildly active star that blasted out an intense solar wind. And just a few million years later, it settled down into its current form. The life cycle of the Sun had begun. -
The Sun, like most stars in the Universe, is on the main sequence stage of its life, during which nuclear fusion reactions in its core fuse hydrogen into helium -
The Sun will run out of hydrogen fuel and slowly slouch towards death. This will begin in about 5.4 billion years, at which point the Sun will exit the main sequence of its lifespan. -
Every second, 600 million tons of matter are converted into neutrinos, solar radiation, and about 4 x 10 27 Watts of energy. For the Sun, this process began 4.57 billion years ago, and it has been generating energy this way every since. -
Unfortunately, this process cannot last forever since there is a finite amount of hydrogen in the core of the Sun -
In 1.1 billion years from now, the Sun will be 10% brighter than it is today, and this increase in luminosity will also mean an increase in heat energy, which Earth's atmosphere will absorb.