what keeps the sun at the distance it is all the time. When did it start?
349629
That is hard to explain, but basically it is angular momentum. The simplest, but technically incorrect, explanation is that the centrifugal force of the Earth's orbit overcomes the Suns gravity to keep it at the same distance, approximately, all the time. To make the Earth fall into the Sun would require stopping it's orbital motion. It would actually take more energy to do that than it would to throw the Earth completely out of the solar system!
1076419
The sun is only about 4.5 billion years old.  The cloud of gas and dust that it formed out of was probably huge, though.
1140436
The earth moves around the sun at a mean distance of 93,000,000 miles.\nAnother point of interest, the earth is more than 4500 million years old.
202841
The equinox is defined as the point where the sun is directly overhead on noon at the equator.  This is very close to when the days and nights are equal, and if the earth traveled around the sun in a perfect circle, they would be the same.\n\nBut the earth travels around the sun in an elliptical path.  Sometimes it is closer to the sun, travelling more quickly, and other times it is further away, travelling more slowly.  This introduces small discrepancies in the length of the day.
16287
"The Sun has been producing solar energy, or heat, since about the same time the Earth was formed 4.6 billion years ago. Solar energy comes from deep within the core of the Sun. There, the temperature is about 27 million degrees Fahrenheit, and the pressure is about 340 billion times the Earth's pressure at sea level. This creates nuclear reactions that release heat energy through convection (http://www.solarviews.com/eng/edu/convect.htm). Five million tons of energy are released from the Sun's core every second. This is the energy that allows life on earth to exist! Scientists predict the Sun will last another five billion years before it collapses into a white dwarf, a star at the end of its burning stage."
804289
The average distance to the sun is 92900000 miles, though it is changing. First I should say that the Earth's orbit around the Sun is elliptical, not perfectly circular, so the Earth-Sun distance is changing as we speak just from the Earth traveling in its orbit around the Sun.\n\nIs the orbit itself changing? Well, there are some long-period oscillations, but those are very small, and don't imply that we're systematically moving towards or away from the Sun.\n\nThere is an effect which is making us move very slowly away from the Sun. That is the tidal interaction between the Sun and the Earth. This slows down the rotation of the Sun, and pushes the Earth farther away from the Sun. The principle for the Sun-Earth system should be the same. But how big of an effect is this? It turns out that the yearly increase in the distance between the Earth and the Sun from this effect is only about one micrometer (a millionth of a meter, or a ten thousandth of a centimeter). So this is a *very* tiny effect.\n\nThere is another effect which is also small, but somewhat bigger than the tidal effect. The Sun is powered by nuclear fusion, which means the Sun is continuously transforming a small part of its mass into energy. As the mass of the Sun goes down, our orbit gets proportionally bigger. However, over the entire main sequence lifetime of the Sun (about 10 billion years), the Sun will only lose about 0.1% of its mass, which means that the Earth should move out by just ~150,000 km (small compared to the total Earth-Sun distance of ~150,000,000 km). If we assume that the Sun's rate of nuclear fusion today is the same as the average rate over those 10 billion years (a bold assumption, but it should give us a rough idea of the answer), then we're moving away from the Sun at the rate of ~1.5 cm (less than an inch) a year. I probably don't even need to mention that this is so small that we don't have to worry about freezing.
275720
It has to do with the path of the earth and the sun through space.\n\nThe websites I've attached should help.
29462
No.  The sun is one of the stars. The earth and the other planets move around the star we call our sun.
528679
No, the sun is set to keep shining for a few more billion years i believe.  No it wouldn't go against that law because yeah it might be running down and not getting better but just like you asked in your question it started millions of years ago.  And the universe is much more than jsut the earth.
235735
Depending on its position in the oval orbit it has around the sun, the earth gets sunlight 8.317 minutes after it is emitted from the sun.
882266
Using Kepler's laws (third law):\n\nThe ratio between the T*T and a*a*a is a constant for our Sun and it applies to all objects rotating around it. where T is the period and a is the average distance. \nSo:\nT2=T1*(a2/a1)^(3/2) ;  ^ is used for power \nT2=1year *[  (4.5*10^9)  /  (1.5*10^9)  ]^(3/2)\nT2=164.3 years     \nTo make sure...see the links
867403
The sun is made of hydrogen.
1129230
No one. The sun has been known to man since before man could be reasonably called man.
334251
The sun is not a planet.
861683
The Earth's orbit is slightly elliptical.  When it is closest to the Sun it is a distance of 91.4 million miles.  At it's furthest it is 94.5m miles.  The distance between the Earth and the Sun is also known as 1AU (astronomical unit).
1097315
Neither of those, it never sets because it doesnt move through space.  The Earth turns, so it appears that the sun is setting.
186428
As far as planets go, Mercury.  All the time.  No planet ever gets closer.  I'm not quite sure what these folks are trying to pull with "pluto" but the closest it ever gets to the sun is still over 26 times farther away than the earth's orbit.\n\nComets and asteroids can get really close to the sun, in fact there is a class of comets that we call "sungrazers" they actually fall into the sun and never return.