Taken for granted - Take 2: The Sun

My purpose in this series of posts is to identify several of the many miracles we take for granted, without which we would cease to exist.

Let us explore the second miracle…

The sun..

The sun has extremely important influences on our planet: It drives weather, ocean currents, seasons, and climate, and makes plant life possible through photosynthesis. The sun's energy is a key ingredient for photosynthesis -- without photosynthesis, free oxygen does not exist and therefore all plant, human and animal life cease to exist.

An important part of the miracle of the sun is that we are 93 million miles away from it -- the perfect distance for the diversity of plant, animal and human life we enjoy.

Reviewing the table attached which shows the other planets in our solar system, we can see an inverse correlation between distance from the sun and average temperature – the further you are away from the sun, the colder it gets (atmospheres also are an important factor for heat – this explains the one anomaly in the table -- Venus).

  Temperature (F)  Distance (M miles) 

Sun  10000                          -    

Venus  867                      67.2  

Mercury  333                      36.0  

Earth  57                      92.9  

Mars  -85                    141.5  

Jupiter  -166                    483.5  

Saturn  -220                    890.2  

Uranus  -320                 1,783.8  

Neptune -330                 2,791.5 

What are the chances that the distance between the earth and the sun is 93 million miles? Its really infinite, but let us assume on the optimistic side that its 1 in eight planets in our solar system, or 12.5%. Carl Sagan in the 1960’s predicted than it was a 1 in 10,000 chance that planets would occur this distance from a neighboring star. Lets use this as our realistic estimate.

Combining the chances of the previous factors:

Probabilities

Base case Realistic

The earth’s mass is 5.972 x 1024 kg 0.0156250 0.000001000000

Sun 93 million miles away 0.1250000 0.000100000000

Total probability of random formation 1.95E-03 1.00E-10

One in xxx chance (inverse) 512 10,000,000,000 The future factors we will add in the coming weeks, as requirements for life to exist on earth, will continue to dramatically impact the overall probability of all these factors occurring together.

In conclusion, let us not take for granted and be thankful for the gift of the sun and it’s perfect distance from the earth -- by enjoying the diversity of the weather, the food we eat, the water we drink, its warmth, and the light that enables us to see. The Sun also has tremendous spiritual symbolism for many religions. .