how long will it take for the sun to burn out?
406243
very long. this is because the sun is a very large star and will take billions or rather trillions of years. when it does burn out however, it will be big enough to swell so big that it will swallow mercury, venus and possibly earth ^^ good luck
985287
THe SUN IS NOT BURNING. IT IS MADE UP OF MILLION OF STARS SO IT DOES NOT NEED TO BURN.
388236
try Hydrogen, actually any thing can burn if the temperature is high enough, now consider that in a star the pressure is so high due to the immense amount of gravity that friction at the molecular level heats it up to enormous temperatures, like the core of the sun is millions of degree, that's very hot, plus in the core of most stars, there is Nuclear fusion taking place which turns the Hydrogen into Helium, it is that nuclear fusion that gives the sun and most stars all of its energy.\n\nand dont worry the sun wont run out of Hydrogen to burn for an estimated 4-5 billion years, so we'r not going to be left in the dark anytime soon.
787978
Hi, \n\nThe sun's orbit is 365.4 days. The actual length changes very little, but with a period of roughly 41,000 years.\n\nHope that helps, \nMatt
480364
Yup. The latest will be 5 billion years from now, give or take a few hundred thousand. By then the sun will either:\n\n1) engulf our planet (very unlikely, but will come close enough to vaporize our planet)\n2) Die and not engulf or vaporize our planet and within days our atmosphere will freeze and fall to the earth in the form of ice.
1004847
No.\nThe Sun may be visible for more than one day over the geographic North Pole during the Summer, but the day is still only about 24 hours long.
99768
Sort of!  As the sun slowly runs out of (mostly hydrogen) fuel, it will expand into a red giant and it's radius will be greater than the current position of the Earth.  However, the Earth's orbit is currently projected to move farther out while this happens so our planet will not actually be engulfed by the sun.  It will, however, experience a very large temperature increase.
737950
The sun is very gradually getting hotter. In about 5.6 billion years, most of the oceans will have boiled and most life on Earth will be gone.\n\nIn about 12.233 billion years, the sun will start to run out of fuel and become a red giant star. It will expand until the outer surface is somewhere between the present location of Earth and Mars. All life on Earth will end.\n\nThis will be because there is no more hydrogen left to make into helium in the core of the sun. When this happens, the sun will start to collapse (not enough force from core pushing out) until it starts fusing helium! This will result in a very dense and unimaginably hot core that produces so much energy that it pushes the outer layers of the sun out to where Earth is now.\n\nIn 12.365 billion years it will run out of helium too and blow its outer layers off entirely when it starts fusing heavier elements. The end result will be a white dwarf (large ball of slowly cooling fusion waste) and a very pretty, very large bubble of glowing gas that will look something like this:\n\nhttp://www.edwinhubble.com/hubble_gallery/planetary_nebula_IC_418.htm\n\nFor the complete past, present and future of our sun, click here:\nhttp://www-astronomy.mps.ohio-state.edu/~pogge/Lectures/vistas97.html
527742
The sun is a star.  All stars eventually burn out.  See facts below:\n\nThe Sun will last about 5 billion years as it is now, a so called Main Sequence Star, and burns 700 billion tonnes a second. This may look like a lot but the Sun actually burns Hydrogen, a gas, and it turns it into Helium, another gas. This happens in the central part of the Sun, its Core, through a process called nuclear fusion. A side effect of fusion is that light and heat are created. So only a small amount of this Hydrogen, only a few Billion tonnes a second, is actually burned off to create light. I would not worry that so much Hydrogen is burnt every second as the sun has a mass of 1.989 times 1030Kg. That is 1,989,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Kg, or one million nine thousand, eight hundred and nine billion, billion, billion Kg. So the odd few Billion tonnes will not be missed. \n\nWhat is really interesting is what happens after the Hydrogen has been used up in the Suns core. At this point in our Sun's life the central part of the Sun, its core, shrinks and heats up and its atmosphere will expand to cover the Earth, and possibly Mars. The Sun is now called a Red Giant Star. If you can find the constellation Orion, the bright red star in the upper left hand corner is a Red Giant called Betelgeuse. After only a few million years the core will shrink again and the our Suns atmosphere will be blown off into space to become Planetary Nebulae. What will be left is a type of Star called a White Dwarf. This will last for many tens of billions of years, slowly cooling and getting dimmer. So, our star, the Sun, will last for 5 Billion years as it is, a few million years as a Red Giant, and finally tens of Billions of Years as a White Dwarf.
891052
It requires a bit more than classical physics, but still, you can estimate the sun's lifetime from a very simple calculation. \n\nFirst of all, if you want the current age of the sun (around 5 billion years) this number is determined from radioactive dating of objects in the solar system which are known to have formed around the same time as the sun, as stated in the answer to a previous question. \n\nThe total lifetime of the sun before it becomes a red giant is, as you say, around 10 billion years (meaning that the transition will occur around 5 billion years from now). This can be estimated by assuming that the sun will "die" when it runs out of energy to keep it shining. The time for this to occur is roughly the total energy the sun has that can be turned into light, divided by the rate at which the sun is giving off energy, or: \n\nlifetime = (energy) / (rate [energy/time] at which sun emits energy) \n\nThe rate at which the sun emits energy (its luminosity) is around 3.8 x 1026 Watts (that's the number 38 followed by 25 zeroes - quite a lot of lightbulbs!). This number can be determined from measurements of how bright the sun appears from Earth as well as its distance from us. \n\nThe total energy that the sun has to burn requires a little extra knowledge (for example, some nuclear physics) to understand. We know that the sun shines via nuclear reactions in the core that transform four hyrogen atoms into one helium atom. If you look at a periodic table, you will see that one helium atom has a little less mass than four hydrogen atoms combined; about 0.7% of the original mass has "disappeared". This "missing mass" gets transformed into energy, and this is the energy that causes the sun to shine. Therefore, using Einstein's famous formula E=mc2 for the conversion between mass and energy we have that the available energy in the sun is: \n\nE = 0.007 x M c2 \n\nwhere c is the speed of light and M is the amount of mass in the sun that is capable of undergoing the above nuclear reactions. \n\nNow, it turns out that only the central part of the sun is at a high enough temperature to actually undergo these reactions. You would need to use a detailed model of the sun's structure to figure out exactly how much of the sun is at a high enough temperature, but if we're just estimating things we can say that on the order of 10% of the sun's mass is in the central part of the sun where it is hot enough to undergo nuclear reactions. We then have: \n\nE = 0.007 x 0.1 x Msun c2 \n\nwhere Msun is the total mass of the sun, 2 x 1030 kilograms. We therefore can calculate that the total energy the sun has to burn is around 1.3 x 1044 Joules. Dividing 3.8 x 1026 Watts (the rate at which the sun is giving off energy) into this number gives an approximate value of 10 billion years for the sun's lifetime.
973630
It will - every sun eventually burns out it is simply a huge star.  It will burn out in like a billion years or something lol.
419301
The sun is actually made up of hydrogen gas. The "burning" you speak of is the fusion of hydrogen in to helium, which emits extreme amounts of light and energy.
1097113
The sun will die because the hydrogen inside it will eventually be used up. This will create enormous pressure and make the sun increase in size, in fact so large that it will engulf the earth. This enlargement is called a red giant. Then it will blow up and all that will remain is the core or a red dwarf that may collapse in on its self creating a black hole. And all this will happen in about 7 billion years, so no need to worry!
96467
Our Sun will "burn out" in about 4.5- to 5.0-billion years from now.\n\nRight now the Sun is converting hydrogen into helium at a rate of some 600-MILLION metric tons per second. Once this main fuel source is exhausted, the Sun will begin fusing helium, and once that's gone it will "burn" progressively heavier and heavier elements. Each change in fuel will be accompanied first by a diminishment in size, then a period of swelling. Mercury, Venus, and Earth will be consumed. Finally nothing but iron will be left to burn in the Sun, and since the energy required for that is higher than the Sun can generate, it will gradually dwindle more and more in size until it will become what's called a 'white dwarf' star.
956140
If the sun produced its energy by burning(like a wood fire, chemically changing atoms or molecules to other types of molecules by transferring or shifting pair bonds of small outer atom particles called electrons), the sun would indeed "burn up". In exothermic(producing heat) chemical reactions only these very light electrons give up energy. However, the sun produces its energy by the much more powerful & efficient nuclear fusion(nuclear bombs) process(hydrogen atoms are slammed together to form helium). In the sun 700 million TONS of hydrogen produces 695 million TONS of helium PER SECOND. The excess 5 million TONS PER SECOND of hydrogen-helium material is converted to pure radiant energy by Einstein's famous equation:\nE=MCsquared =M times C times C; \nwhere E= energy,\nM=mass,\nC =the speed of light=984million feet per second.\n\nAs you can see, energy is very very much when 5 million TONS OF MASS is multiplied by the speed of light(almost 1 billion feet per second), not just once, but TWICE. That is why a nuclear fusion bomb is millions of times more powerful than a chemical bomb. But the sun's energy per second isn't just one nuclear bomb...it is the very same energy as 10 BILLION NUCLEAR BOMBS PER SECOND. You may get an inkling of an idea how much power this is, if you imagine 1 square mile of terrain on the earth. In that square mile imagine 50 nuclear bombs blowing up...then one second later, 50 more nuclear bombs...then one second later, 50 more nuclear bombs...& on & on & on & on. However, that is just in one square mile on the earth. Now image that EVERY SQUARE MILE ALL OVER THE EARTH, FROM THE EQUATOR TO THE NORTH & SOUTH POLES ALSO HAVE 50 NUCLEAR BOMBS PER SECOND BLOWING UP. \n\nThat is the power of the sun.\n\nHowever, you say....fusing 700 million tons hydrogen per second must still burn the sun up in short order.\n\nBut the sun is huge...108 times the diameter & 300, 000 times the mass of the earth...for a grand total of 2200 million million million million tons of mostly hydrogen fuel. At its present rate, it would take 3.1 million million million seconds or 100 billion years to fuse its hydrogen. Towards the end of the sun's life, the sun will fuse quicker. But still the sun will fuse for 5 billion more years.
676858
150 million kms divided by 300000 km/sec\n8 minutes 20 seconds.\n\nHowever... now comes the fun part.\n\nFusion, the energy source of the sun, takes places only in the core. And the sun is so dense, that a photon created down there, takes a lot of time to come out to the surface. It collides, gets absorbed, is re-emitted, takes a day of to dance.\n\nIn all a photon takes a million year or so to surface.\nAnd million years plus 8 minutes to arrive at the earth.
75655
I suppose in time it will die out.  Our sun is nothing more than a star and they do fade. As for whether or not it gets smaller or not but it will fade, get cooler, and less bright.  I would think that meant getting smaller too but I am not sure.