This was on a ham radio list today and I thought, since the sun is so very
much a part of end times prophecy, you might like reading about it.  The
bottom line is, those going through the tribulation will see the sun going
into a nova red giant stage, that is, heating up 7 times what it is right
now, at least according to the Bible.

Phil.



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> KnowledgeNews
> SciencePhiles
> Firing Up the Sun
>
> The sun, in ultraviolet light. The colors reveal temperature,
> from 1.8 million (blue) to 3.6 million (red) degrees Fahrenheit.=20
>
> Friends, sun scientists have announced the start of a new solar cycle.
> (It's "Solar Cycle 24," if you're keeping track.) What does that mean?
>
> You might not know it, but solar activity waxes and wanes in 11-year
> cycles. Recently, we've been at the end of a cycle, with a comparative
> lack of solar
> activity. The start of a new cycle means that the frequency of solar
> storms and other activity should start to pick up--though the new cycle
> won't reach
> "Solar Max" until 2011 or 2012.
>
> There's nothing to fear--though NASA scientists warn that "solar storms
> can disable satellites that we depend on for weather forecasts and GPS
> navigation."
> There is, however, plenty to learn about the sun. You know that the
> bright ball in the sky is crucial to life on Earth. But do you know what
> it's actually
> made of? Today, let's slather on some SPF 15,000,000 and journey to the
> center of the sun.
>
> 3 . . . 2 . . . 1 . . . Blastoff!
>
> First, get comfortable. It's going to be a long trip--about 93 million
> miles (150 million km), depending on where Earth is in its elliptical
> orbit. Since
> we've got time to burn, let's brush up on some basic sun facts.
>
> Size facts: Astronomers say our sun is nothing special as stars go--just
> another middle-aged yellow dwarf. Even so, it's by far the biggest thing
> in our
> neck of the cosmos, accounting for more than 99 percent of our solar
> system's total mass. More than a million Earths could fit inside the
> sun, which has
> a diameter of 865,000 miles (1.4 million km).
>
> Age facts: The sun has been burning for 4.6 billion years and has a life
> expectancy of nine or ten billion. In another four or five billion, our
> yellow
> dwarf will expand into a hot red giant. Then it will contract into a
> white dwarf, smaller than it is now. Finally, when all its thermal
> energy is spent,
> it will become a cold black dwarf.
>
> Inside facts: The sun is made almost entirely of hydrogen and helium.
> About 70 percent of its mass is hydrogen. Another 28 percent is helium.
> The rest consists
> of elements like carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen. The sun's core process is
> a nuclear fusion reaction in which hydrogen atoms fuse to produce helium
> atoms
> (and release energy when they do).
>
> Touching the Surface
>
> If you're starting to feel hot, it's because we've reached the corona,
> the outermost part of the sun's atmosphere (not including the solar
> wind, which blows
> out well past Pluto). Temperatures here regularly reach 3.6 million
> degrees Fahrenheit (2 million degrees Celsius). The corona extends
> millions of miles
> into space, so we still have a way to go to get to the next layer.
> Luckily, we're flying fast.
>
> Beneath the corona is the chromosphere (from the Greek word chromos, or
> "color"). It has a reddish tint, and it's far cooler than the
> corona--thousands
> of degrees hot instead of millions. In fact, scientists still don't
> understand why the corona is so hot. From Earth, we can't see the
> chromosphere, or
> the corona, except during a solar eclipse.
>
> Having traveled through several thousand miles of chromosphere, we reach
> the photosphere, which is only a few hundred miles thick. Here, the
> temperature
> is a comparatively cool 10,000 degrees F (5,500 degrees C), and energy
> is given off as visible light. The photosphere is the part of the sun we
> ordinarily
> see from Earth. Some call it the sun's "surface," because beneath it,
> the sun's gases are thick enough to be opaque. Above it, they are
> transparent.
>
> Inside Stuff
>
> Beneath the photosphere, we reach the sun's interior, which has three
> layers. First is the convective zone, where the temperature heats up
> again to around
> 3.6 million degrees F (2 million degrees C). Here, energy circulates in
> large cells. This part of the sun is a bit like a pot of boiling water,
> only with
> hot plasma bubbling up toward the surface.
>
> Further in, we reach the radiative zone. It's as hot as 12.6 million
> degrees F here (7 million degrees C), and energy radiates out from the
> sun's core at
> the speed of light. Still, this deep, the sun is so dense that each
> photon of energy may bounce from particle to particle for a million
> years before reaching
> the convective zone.
>
> After fighting through that traffic jam, we finally arrive at the sun's
> core, which burns at 27 million degrees F (15 million degrees C). Talk
> about a high-pressure
> environment! The pressure here is 250 billion times that of Earth, so
> great that hydrogen atoms fuse to form helium atoms. Every second, 700
> million tons
> of hydrogen become 695 million tons of helium, with the extra 5 million
> tons released as energy.
>
> Only one half of one-billionth of the sun's energy will travel to the
> Earth's surface, but that's still enough to sustain life on our planet.
> Sunlight makes
> the 93-million-mile trip in around eight and a half minutes--almost as
> fast as you just made it.
>
> --Steve Sampson and Kris Herbert
>
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