Take a look at your thumbnail. Now picture a spot the same size on the Sun. This tiny spot would be as bright as a million candles shining all at once!
The Sun is our brightest and most important source of light. At any given moment, it sends out 383 billion billion megawatts of light energy. That’s 383,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 watts! Compare that to a light bulb in your home. It probably gives between 50 and 150 watts, so it has a lot less power.
Very little of the Sun’s light reaches us, because almost all of it speeds off into space, away from Earth. “Speed” is putting it mildly. Light is the fastest thing in the universe!
The few rays that do arrive make life happen for every living thing on Earth. Without light, our world would be totally dark. It would be so cold that everything would freeze solid. Life just couldn’t exist without light.
