Talk:Sun

SUN

SUN

Sol vs. Sun

Should our sun, the star of our solar system, be called Sol instead of Sun? Sol is the common name for our star; "the sun" is 'that shiny object in the sky that gives us light and warmth'. On a planet of any other star system, I believe they would also point to their light-giving sphere and call it "the sun", even if the star is, say, Sirius A.

I would like to see this Sun wiki page linked to or moved to the wiki page Sol -- or at least the astronomical data of the star I think should be moved to wiki page Sol. Historical and cultural and etc data can remain here on the Sun page.

tl;dr: Sol is the scientific and astronomical name for our star -- much like Sirius, Rigel, etc have names. "The sun" is the common term for "light-giving sphere in the sky", which can be the case on any planet. It is not the name of our star. This page should be moved/updated accordingly.

Sources/References/Relevant:

1. ninjawords.com: (One) definition of "sun": (n) "A star, especially when seen as the centre of any single solar system."
2. wikipedia.org/Sun: "The Latin name for the star, Sol, is widely known but is not common in general English language use; the adjectival form is the related word solar."
3. wikipedia.org/Sol: "Typically used in science fiction and other contexts where the author wants to distinguish our particular star or the Solar System from "a sun" or "a planetary system""
4. earthsky.org/space/what-is-the-suns-name: "Bottom line: Our sun doesn’t have an official proper name, according to the International Astronomical Union. In antiquity, the names Sol and Helios referred to ancient sun gods and perhaps the sun itself."

Elaborating from Reference #4 above, there currently is no official name -- which is why I'm coming to wikipedia to try and encourage the use of Sol as the official name, because, as I explained above, I think it is a more practical name for both astronomy and the English language.

What does everyone else think? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kamkila (talk • contribs) 14:49, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

Though I can understand and in fact somewhat agree with your logic, per the WP:FORUM policy "Wikipedia is not a place to publish your own thoughts and analyses or to publish new information". WP:UCN gives that since Sol is equally unofficial as Sun but also far less commonly used in nearly all contexts, the page can't be moved/split. Reatlas (talk) 10:17, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

Much like the word god is capitalized when referring to a specific diety, the word sun implies and is used to describe any star with planets while "Sun" or "the Sun" refers specifically to our star. The word Sol could then also be defined. I feel this should be clarified at the top of the article and/or included in the disambiguation section. I don't feel qualified to edit this page so I will leave it to someone who is. Jellyneck (talk) 20:44, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

The word "sol" has other meanings. It is used to refer to the rotation periods, relative to the Sun, of planets other than the Earth. For example. NASA's press releases about the rovers on the surface of Mars say that a rover did something on Sol number X, where X is the number of sols that have elapsed since the rover landed. DOwenWilliams (talk) 21:01, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

Characteristics: Poor expression

Existing sentence: "The photosphere is the last visible layer as those above it are too cool or too thin to radiate a significant amount of light to be visible to the naked eye"

Propose replacing the word "significant" with "sufficient" so the sentence will read: "The photosphere is the last visible layer as those above it are too cool or too thin to radiate a sufficient amount of light to be visible to the naked eye"

Additionally, the phrase "visible to the naked eye" is ambiguous. I suspect that this is referring to what can be observed at visible wavelengths. If so, the sentence should say that and should be further changed to read: "The photosphere is the last visible layer as those above it are too cool or too thin to radiate a sufficient amount of light to be observable in light at wavelengths visible to humans"

TerribleTadpole (talk) 00:31, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

With this edit, I changed "significant" to "sufficient". I don't really feel that "visible to the naked eye" is ambiguous, and I don't think we need to get as elaborate as your suggestion. The term naked eye is wikilinked in the article, so in the (in my opinion) unlikely event a reader thinks it means something else, or doesn't understand it, one click takes them to an explanation which begins: "The naked eye is a figure of speech referring to human visual perception unaided by a magnifying or light-collecting optical device". That all seems fine to me. Thanks for pointing out the error, and I love your username. Happy editing. Begoon ^talk 02:01, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

And further improved by User:DOwenWilliams, here:[1]. Thanks again for drawing attention to the inconsistency. Begoon ^talk 03:37, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

"However, before and after this spell as a stable star burning hydrogen in its core, a star is a very different object."

I can't tell if this statement is trying to sound like a textbook or what. It makes no sense. RocketLauncher2 (talk) 09:52, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

Convective zone

At the end of the first paragraph of section Convective zone it says: "At the photosphere, the temperature has dropped two 5,700 K and the density two only 0.2 g/m3 (about 1/6, 000th the density of air at sea level).[48 ]". But the source says, "At the visible surface the temperature has dropped two 5,700 K and the density is only 0.0000002 gm/cm3 (about 1/10, 000th the density of air at sea level)" [2]. 84.202.218.13 (talk) 10:26, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

The two densities are identical, so I assume what you don't like is the comparison to air. The density of air is 1.225 kg/m3, which is 6125 times less than 0.2 g/m3. This factor can be rounded to 6000 or to 10000, depending on what precision you want. Given the uncertainty in the Sun's density, it might be best to say "four orders of magnitude less than..." so people don't mistake the factor for an exact number. On the other hand there might be readers who are not familiar with "orders of magnitude". — HHHIPPO 11:56, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

Death of the Sun -> Envelops Mercury's Iron core -> Supernova?

With the planet Mercury having a large iron core and being the closest planet to the Sun, will our star supernova, or proceed directly to a white dwarf, soon after it envelops the planet Mercury in a few million years? I would think that as soon as the iron and nickel from Mercury is incorporated into the Sun it will quickly migrate to the core of the star, due to it's density, and interrupt the exothermic fusion process through photodisintegration or some other mechanism. In summary, will the endothermic nature of iron and nickel halt the helium fusion chain reaction, and if so, what happens next? --NJB (talk) 13:35, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

Mercury is a speck of dust compared with the Sun. While less than one percent of the mass of the Sun consists of heavy elements such as iron and nickel, this is still hundreds or thousands of times more than the total mass of Mercury. When Mercury is absorbed by the sun (billions of years from now), it will increase the mass of nickel and iron in the star by much less than one percent. Will this make a significant change to the nuclear reactions in its core? I doubt it. DOwenWilliams (talk) 04:26, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

Suggestion: first sentence of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun to read:

Sun, or Sól, is the de facto name given to the star at the center of our Solar System.—HamiltonFromAbove (talk) 03:50, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

 Not done Unsourced. Tbhotch.^™ Grammatically incorrect? Correct it! See terms and conditions. 06:10, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

Why do you think that "Sol" is an appropriate name for the Sun? It is the basis of the adjective "solar", but appears as a proper noun only in Science Fiction. We mention the Latin name "Sol" in a later paragraph. Is this not adequate to reflect reality? Dbfirs 07:36, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

Math error

In the article entitled "Sun" it states that the sun is roughly 150 million kilometers from Earth (1.5 billion meters). Later in the same article it states that light from the sun takes about eight minutes to get to Earth. Since the speed of light is roughly 300 million meters per second, either light must reach the earth in five minutes, or the distance to the sun averages 2.4 billion meters. I understand that the distance to the sun varies throughout the orbital period of the Earth, but these two statements are not mathematically coherent. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wtchdrmd (talk • contribs) 16:55, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

There are two errors in your calculation: 150 million km are 150 billion m, not 1.5 billion m, and you forgot to convert from seconds to minutes. Try again ;-) — HHHIPPO 17:42, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

Thank you - foolish errors, and I am appropriately embarrassed. The numbers now work as stated in the article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wtchdrmd (talk • contribs) 18:48, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

I hate it when things poorly substantiated are stated as absolute facts...

soap

It seems to be the position of 'pop-science' in past decades. Scientists look more and more like salesmen trying to pedal their latest theory. If they don't state it in strong grammar that portrays their position as absolute fact, they fear they might lose popularity. Really. Isn't that it? Eg. the entirely speculative theory about the sun's origin... here's the real physics folks. In general things in space don't collide, they travel in hyperbolic or elliptical paths around one another. It is possible that collisions will happen and it's possible that a variety of things will dogpile at once and accumulate as this article says absolutely happened. It just is unlikely HOWEVER that isn't how we know this isn't how it happened. We know it didn't happen this way by evaluating solar wind energy and seeing what variety of particles would have been moved from the region. As it turns out, I seem to recall a few mm of Al density material would still be hanging around. This is a massive problem for the theory posted (as fact)... because think about it. THis mass of material comes together in a swirling mass. Wouldn't there naturally be a distribution of LESS obstructed matter continuing to orbit? That's kind of how things generally work right? Unless..some creator say INJECTED the right amount of material. But naturalistically we'd expect a vast variety of material that would dither down in density as collisions occurred and the matter lost orbital status and became part of the future sun. BUT ONCE THE DENSITY GOT TO A CERTAIN POINT, then there would be insufficient collision potential and eventually a mass of material would be found in orbit. And some would just continue on a hyperbolic path perhaps. But IF the sun formed...IF that huge mass came together there SHOULD be a large distribution of material that didn't wind up in it but did wind up in orbital paths. Then the sun ignites and solar wind drives out the less dense materials. However again if we do the calculations which are on my web page as I recall, and are easy to do... we find there should be a distribution of material that was NOT driven out. And not just in the asteroid belt but all over the region. Obviously planets (wherever they came from. One's spinning the wrong way so an accretion in a disk scenario doesn't work for that either) would clear their orbital paths of debris. But our probes do NOT find sufficient density of ANYTHING to promote the 'theory' that is promoted as FACT by whoever wrote that article or part of the article. I haven't even read the rest. Let me know when a person who has at least done well in upper level physics courses like E+M and CLassical Mechanics has been given oversight of the page. Really..wiki is a joke on subjects like this because it's always some person who just doesn't have the background to FACT CHECK.... before they state things AS fact.... — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sounddoctorin (talk • contribs) 23:39, 9 July 2013 (UTC) Wikipedia reports facts and theories that are set out in reputable documents elsewhere. You need to point us to published papers that set out your reservations about the current theory, then we can include those reservations. I agree with you that origins are better presented as theories. Dbfirs 05:32, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

Possibility of diversifying topics in the lede?

Just reading this article for the first time -- really brilliant (like the subject...) and very well written, cited, documents. Complements on creating this FA. I was wondering though if the lede (and some parts later) might be improved by eliminating some of the specifics that are dealt with later in the article and if the non-astronomical encyclopedic aspects of the Sun could be given more emphasis. For instance, there is an explanation of spectral class label indications in the lede ("the spectral class label, G2 indicates its surface temperature of approximately 5778 K (5505 °C), and V indicates that the Sun...") but only at the end is the Sun's role in photosynthesis or its significance in human thought and belief mentioned (again, written quite well, but somewhat hidden after a discussion of cosmic background radiation, etc.). The sun's orbit and the galactic north pole is mentioned, but the fact that earth and the other planets orbit it is not. It would be good if eclipse were defined briefly somewhere in the article (I know that there are other articles that describe it well, but sun seems a good place to start), since a number of times the effects of eclipses on our ability to observe are mentioned. Thanks for listening. Best, -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 21:35, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

Distance to galactic center

29-07-2013 In the article it is stated the Sun orbits at a distance of 24-26,000 light years from the galactic centre, but according to a search entered on NASA's website the distance is approximately 50,000 light years to the centre of the galaxy from Earth. An expert in editing Wikipedia should check this for accuracy and edit the article with the correction. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.100.54.203 (talk) 13:00, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure where you get this information. When I entered a NASA search I found this page which gives the distance as 26,000 light years. Could you give the URL of the page which says 50,000 light years? — Reatlas (talk) 13:17, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

'Billion' left ambiguous without scientific notation

I was left a little puzzled about the age of the sun after reading this article as I couldn't discern whether the 'billion' in this article was defiantly long or short scale

Would it be possible to also use scientific notation for units of time in this article for the sake of those countries where 'billion' causes confusion