Question: How was the sun formed??

Sheila Kanani answered on 15 Mar 2011:

The Sun is a pretty average star.

About five billion years ago, a giant cloud of gas and dust, or nebula, collapsed to form the solar system. Slowly the nebula shrank to form a spinning disk.

As gravity pulled some of the gas into the center of the disk, the gas became hot and dense enough for nuclear fusion to begin and the sun was born.

The heavier elements found in the solar system and the sun may be the result of a supernova explosion that occured at the beginning of the sun’s formation, it may also have been this supernova that triggered the accretion of the sun’s matter from hydrogen gas clouds.

Our Sun and the solar system formed from a huge, slowly rotating molecular cloud made of hydrogen and helium molecules and dust. Under its own gravity, the cloud began to compress.

As it compressed, it spun faster and faster, like an ice skater who spins faster as he pulls his arms in closer to his body. The spinning flattened the material into a giant disk.

Most of the mass was concentrated at the center of the disk, forming a gas sphere. The sphere continued to attract material from the disk. As new material was added, the sphere compressed, increasing the temperatures and pressures until they were sufficient to fuse atoms in the very center of the sphere – and at that point a star – our Sun, was born.

Scientists calculate our Sun and solar system formed at the same time – a whopping 4.56 billion years ago!