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Asked by anon-198934 to Srinath, Natasha, Nana, Luisa, Gautam, Alex on 12 Mar 2019.
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Alexander Allen answered on 12 Mar 2019:
The sun is really really bright!
Simply put its a constant, continuous and massive nuclear explosion that will keep happening for 10 billion years. There is so much energy coming from the sun that even though there is no air in space, so much radiation still makes it to earth. Space is at minus 270 degrees in temperature but the sun can heat the earth to comfortable temperatures averaging (say) around 20 degrees.
Although a lot of the intense heat can only reach us through radiation, all of the light makes it to us through the same (radiation) mechanism. This means that the sun is incredibly bright despite the fact that we are 93 million miles away.
The total amount of radiation hitting any square metre of the earth due to the sun at any given moment is about 1 kilowatt of power and that is bright… That’s every metre squared….
Short answer… because you’re watching an explosion
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Natasha Dowey answered on 13 Mar 2019:
If you think of all the stars in the sky, they are all suns. Really, really far away. So much farther away than our sun. But yet we can still see them, shining brightly. All of the stars, our sun included, are the sites of nuclear explosions- which is why it hurts our eyes to look at our sun, which although it seems quite far, is still much much closer to us than all those other stars!
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Srinath Kasturirangan answered on 13 Mar 2019: last edited 13 Mar 2019 9:43 pm
Good question! Did you know that you could actually look at the sun from Venus even though Venus is closer to the sun than earth (that is if you could get to venus, land there, get out of the space craft and still be alive to look at the sun)!? Seen from beneath Venus’ dense, sulfuric acid-laden clouds, the sun is no more than a dimly glowing patch in the perpetual overcast sky!! But the real answer to your question adding to what Alex and Tasha have already answered below – the inverse square law tells us that the intensity of light from an object falls off with the square of the distance. So, for example, sunlight is about 900 times dimmer on Neptune than on Earth because Neptune is about 30 times farther from the sun (30 x 30 = 900). So maybe skip the sunscreen on Neptune!!
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