the mayans never said that the world was going to end. their calendar just stopped

I have heard that Nasa has measured that the sun burns 1 metre mass every hour. How old then can the sun be? Can anyone verify or tell where this information is? I have searched in Nasa publications, but there is to much to cover.

From my college astronomy notes (simplified version):

The Sun converts about 700 billion tons of hydrogen to helium every SECOND. Sounds like a lot but
when consider that the mass of the Sun is 1,989 billion billion billion kilograms, it is a very tiny amount.

As the temperature rises in the core, the density decreases, reaction rate goes down. Reduced reaction
rate (hydrogen fusion) causes core density to increase. It is a self-stabilizing cycle.

The sun has to be at least as old as the Solar System by definition, 4.5 billion years old. It should last about another 5 billion years, a few million years as a red giant, a few billion years as a white dwarf.

Hope this helps.

The Sun converts about 700 billion tons of hydrogen to helium every SECOND

That is just the amount of mass being converted to helium, right? How much exactly would the amount of mass converted to energy?

Good question. The number I have is 4 million metric tons per second. Again, this is a very tiny amount compared to the total mass of the Sun. Apparently, the largest mass loss is caused by light pressure on the Solar atmosphere, which is known as Solar wind. This loss is much larger than the loss through the
fusion process.

I believe I have the numbers used to calculate the mass loss figure using good old E=Mc^2 somewhere in my notes. If you would like to see that, I will attempt to locate.

engineerretired