Scientists estimate that our sun is approximately 4.57 billion years old. And they're pretty confident in that number, which begs a direct question: How do they know this? Just like when we prosecute a suspect, we can use DNA, eyewitnesses, fingerprints, and various tools to pinp

Scientists estimate that our sun is approximately 4.57 billion years old. And they're pretty confident in that number, which begs a direct question: How do they know this?

Just like when we prosecute a criminal suspect, we can use DNA, witnesses, fingerprints and various tools to target the target. Scientists have also used various means to prove the age of the sun.

The first way is to look for the oldest things in the solar system.

The technique used by scientists is called nuclear lunar chronology, which actually uses nuclear radioactivity to determine the age of objects in space. One example is using iron-60, which has a total of 60 protons and neutrons in its core. Iron-60 is very difficult to produce and is usually only produced after

. After a few million years, iron-60 will decay into nickel-60, which is stable and exists forever. Scientists have discovered that nickel-60 is scattered throughout the solar system, especially inside meteorites, which are leftover bits and pieces from when the solar system first formed. By measuring the amount of nickel-60, astronomers can work backwards in time to determine the age of the sun.

Another, completely independent way of measuring the age of the sun is to take pictures of stars

Stars live so long that it is impossible to follow a star throughout its lifetime. But there are countless stars around us. Some of these stars were born recently, while others were born a long time ago. Therefore, we can take pictures of stars at different stages of their lives.

Imagine that we take pictures of a million different people completely at random. You will see babies just starting to crawl, middle-aged people working hard, seniors enjoying retirement, and even people of every age group. Although you can't follow a person and take a picture of him every year. But through this method you can still extract the characteristics of people of each age group. When scientists applied this method to the sun, they got the same answer they got from the first method.

Both techniques ( Of course, scientists have all kinds of other incredible ways to determine the age of the sun. ) both point in the same direction: a sun that is only 4.5 billion years old.