Marsha Taplin, Age 8, Of Houston, Tex., For Her Question:

How old is the solar system?

No one can tell you exactly how long the earth and its sister planets have been whirling around and around the sun. We know that the planets are the children of the sun. But no one knows the exact age of the starry sun itself. It must, of course, be older than its children. The experts figure that our wonderful world has had at least four billion birthdays. So the sun and the solar system must be older than 4000 inillion years.

Someday the experts who figure out these problems may find the answers. But they still are trying to prove how the sun itself was created. When they know this for sure, then they may be ab1e to tell us the age of our parent star and perhaps when the solar system was born.