The ancients thought the Sun was a big lump of coal

The ancients thought the Sun was a big lump of coal. If that was the case , it would have burnt up in 5000 years. We now know that the dynamics of the sun's generation of the heat and light is much more complicated.
Did you know it takes thousands of years for the heat to come up from the center to go out from the Sun where we see it 9.5 minutes later on earth?

Now here is some of the latest.

Twisted Solution to Sun's Mystery Heat
By Jeanna Bryner“Theorists suggested that twisted, tangled magnetic fields might exist,” said study presenter Leon Golub, senior astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. “With the XRT, we can see them clearly for the first time.”
Staff Writer
posted: 21 March 2007
01:16 pm ET
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/070321_solarb_update.html