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The sun is a large body in space that is 150 million kilometers away from earth. The sun's energy makes life possible on earth. The heat from the sun creates weather and winds. Its energy can be used to run machines yet most of the sun's energy is lost in space. The Earth only receives about one two-billionth of the sun's total energy. Some people don't believe this because the sun seems so hot in the summer. According to the World Book Encyclopedia, "about 126 trillion horsepower is sent to earth."Dividing the converted value of 9.4 × 1016 watts by 2 × 10-9 gives a total power of 4.7 × 1025 watts.

The sun's interior has a temperature of 14 to 15 million kelvin and its surface about 6000 kelvin. The radius of the sun is about 700,000 kilometers. To determine the power of the sun, scientists use the Stefan-Boltzmann Law

Source: http://hypertextbook.com

1) Heimler, Neal. Principles of Science. New York: Merrill, 1979. ----> "temperature surface: 6000 °C"
2) "Sun." World Book Encyclopedia. Field Enterprises, 1970. ----> "… about 126 trillion horsepower is sent to earth"
3) "BNSG 133, Sun."Bill Nye The Science Guy. PBS. 20 November 1998. ----> "Four-hundred septillion watts! That's 400 trillion-trillion watts!"