The sun is, in fact, 147 million kilometers away from the Earth at the closest point in our orbit and 153 million kilometers at the farthest point. People did not like being told this.Īround the same time, Erastothenes of Cyrene, the Greek mathematician renowned for calculating the circumference of the Earth with astonishing precision, also calculated the distance from the sun to the Earth as being about 150 million kilometers (about 94 million miles). Around the same time, another Greek astronomer and philosopher, Anaxagoras, suggested that the sun was not, in fact, the chariot of Helios and was instead a giant ball of flaming metal that orbited the Earth. The first person in recorded history to say that our world revolves around the sun, literally and not just metaphorically, was the Greek astronomer Aristarchus of Samos, who lived during the 3rd century BC. *And you would be correct, because it does. You might say, in fact, that our world revolves around the sun.* The sun gives us heat and light, our changing seasons, and makes all life and civilization on Earth possible. Many religions, ancient and modern, see the radiant, blinding disk in the sky as an icon of divine beings such as Aten, Utu, Tonatiuh, Sol Invictus, Ameratsu, Surya, etc. Ancient Egyptians venerated it as the god Ra, who sailed across the sky in a celestial boat as one might sail down the Nile ancient Greeks worshiped it as Helios, who drove a chariot from horizon to horizon pulled by flaming horses. Since the dawn of time, humanity has stood in awe of our sun.
To answer “how nuclear fusion works,” perhaps we should first ask, “how does the sun work?”
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