I love astronomy stuff, not an expert at all, but have always been so fascinated by it. I am totally baffled by how we seem to claim that we can approximate how long the sun has been around. Like the margin of error for a number like that is crazy…. totally incomprehensible to me. Say that we are 25% off, that means we are over 1 billion years off. So, how do people confidently claim that the sun is 4.6 billion years, rather than 3 billion or 10 billion?
In: 1140
Several ways helped narrow it down.
The suns gravity and the way it affects the planets orbits allows scientists to calculate its mass.
Rock samples from the earth, moon and asteroids have been dated. Assuming we formed around the same time from the same material.
The suns spectrum shows us its metal composition.
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