The Sun

The sun is the light in the sky that makes the day. It is a very big round thing made from gas, and it is the only one like it that is near us. Do not look at it: it is beautiful, but looking at it damages your eyes.

It is not burning

The sun looks like it is burning, but it is not. Burning needs air, and there is no air in the sun or around it. What happens inside the sun is a different thing: it pushes the centres of two small atoms into each other, and they become one centre. Each time this happens, some light is made. This happens very, very many times each moment, and that is all the sun's light.

It is very big and very far

The sun is much bigger than it looks. You could put a thousand thousand things as big as the ground we live on inside it. It looks small because it is far from here: light is the quickest thing that exists, and light from the sun needs a small part of an hour to go from it to your eyes.

Your body is made from its light

Plants take the sun's light and use it to make food. Animals eat the plants, and you eat the plants and the animals. All food is the sun's light, changed into a thing you can eat. Your body grew from food — and because of this, your body is made from the sun's light, changed many times.

When the day ends

The ground we live on turns at all times. When your side turns towards the sun, your day starts. When your side turns from the sun, the sky becomes black, and you can see the white circle and very many small lights. Here is the most important thing in this book: each of these small lights is another sun, very, very far from here. Some are bigger than the sun that is near us. Around some of them, there are other grounds, turning.

Its end

The sun cannot make light for all time. About five thousand thousand thousand years from now, it will have no more small atoms to push into each other. It will become very big and red, and eat the grounds that are near it. Then it will become small and white, and its light will end. You do not need to fear this: it is very far from now, and maybe people will find another sun to live near, long before then.