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How does the sun heat the earth? What happens when ice melts, how hot is it?
Question Date: 2021-11-12
Answer 1:

The surface of the sun is just about 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit, or 5,500 degrees Celsius, which is extremely hot! However the sun is even hotter at its center, where it’s over 25 million degrees Fahrenheit, or 14 million degrees Celsius! To understand how the sun can heat the earth, it’s helpful to first understand why the sun is so hot and how it’s heat is generated.

The sun is a star, and all stars generate their heat by nuclear fusion. Nuclear fusion is the process where atoms, the building blocks of all matter in the universe, collide with each other and get stuck, which forms new atoms. In the sun, most of the nuclear fusion occurs with hydrogen and helium atoms. When these atoms get stuck together through nuclear fusion, energy is released to generate heat. This happens many, many times in the sun, which is why it’s so hot. This heat then radiates away from the sun and some of that heat reaches the earth. Fortunately, a lot of that heat from the sun that reaches earth gets reflected back into space, but some of it gets trapped by the earth and the atmosphere and that heats up the earth.

Over time, the earth might start to trap more and more of this heat from the sun. When that happens, the earth experiences global warming,this climate change is higher temperatures in areas where there are large glaciers made entirely of ice. When ice gets warmed up to 32 degrees Fahrenheit, or 0 degrees Celsius, it melts and becomes liquid water.

Therefore, climate change may cause the glaciers to melt away faster than new glaciers can be made. The water that results from these melted glaciers flows into the oceans and over time the amount of water in the oceans increases, which causes the sea level to rise.



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