Eli5 The sun converts about 4 million metric tons of its mass into energy every second. Does this mean that it’s mass reduces significantly over the span of, say, ten years?

Question

4 million tons a second is a lot of mass to be lost given enough time. Considering the fact that the sun is over four billion years old, does this mean that the sun was physically bigger when it formed?

What about a couple of hundred years ago? Or a few years ago? Could the suns loss of mass imply that it’s shrinking over time?

In: Physics

Answer 1

A bit off topic, but this is a good example of why infinity is a really hard concept to grasp. For instance, 1 to 2 is a big difference, but 50 to 51 is not, at least in our mind. It get weird the more you scale up too. That’s why we categorized and subdivide everything.