Sun
The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is almost perfectly spherical and consists of hot plasma interwoven with magnetic fields. It has a diameter of about 1,392,684 km, about 109 times that of Earth, and its mass (about 2×1030 kilograms, 330,000 times that of Earth) accounts for about 99.86% of the total mass of the Solar System. Chemically, about three quarters of the Sun's mass consists of hydrogen, while the rest is mostly helium. The remainder (1.69%, which nonetheless equals 5,628 times the mass of Earth) consists of heavier elements, including oxygen, carbon, neon and iron, among others.
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Famous quotes containing the word sun:
“The sun of a princes good graces resembles that in the skies in that it shines most kindly upon the blackest people.”
—Franz Grillparzer (17911872)
“I kept as still as I could. Nothing happened. I did not expect anything to happen. I was something that lay under the sun and felt it, like the pumpkins, and I did not want to be anything more. I was entirely happy. Perhaps we feel like that when we die and become a part of something entire, whether it is sun and air, or goodness and knowledge. At any rate, that is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great. When it comes to one, it comes as naturally as sleep.”
—Willa Cather (18731947)
“We laugh at him who steps out of his room at the very moment when the sun steps out, and says: I will the sun to rise; and at him who cannot stop the wheel, and says: I will it to roll; and at him who is taken down in a wrestling match, and says: I lie here, but I will that I lie here! And yet, all laughter aside, do we ever do anything other than one of these three things when we use the expression, I will?”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (18441900)