The temperature of the sun is 36,000,000 F and is the hottest ball of mass in the solar system. The sun keeps every planet in orbit by its gravity. Our star goes through cycles of high and low activity that repeats about every 11 years. The number of dark spots on the sun marks this variation. As the number of spots increases so does the solar activity.
Sunspots are sources of flares, which are the most violent events in the sun.
Even if we use only one thousandth of the solar energy available, this is almost three and one half the times the energy consumption of all the earths inhabitants. In a m atter of minutes a large flare releases a million times more energy than the largest earthquake. The photovolatic effect was discovered in 1839 by Alexandre Edmond Becquerel, a french scientist who wondered why some materials gave off sparks when exposed to light. He proved his theory that this was a direct conversion of light to electrica l energy. At the time, machines running on electricity had not been invented yet, so there was no practical use for this discovery.