The Sun is approximately 4.6 billion years old. This age estimate is based on the dating of the oldest meteorites and lunar rocks, which formed around the same time as the Sun and the rest of the solar system
. Scientists use radioactive dating techniques on these ancient materials to determine this age, and the consistency of these findings across different samples supports the estimate. The Sun is considered to be about halfway through its main-sequence lifetime, which lasts roughly 9 to 10 billion years. It still has about 5 billion years left before it evolves into a red giant
. While some alternative and less widely accepted theories propose younger ages for the Sun, ranging from millions to tens of millions of years, the mainstream scientific consensus firmly supports the 4.5 to 4.6 billion-year age based on well-established solar models and radiometric dating
. In summary, the Sun formed about 4.6 billion years ago from a collapsing molecular cloud and has been steadily burning hydrogen in its core since then
